ew she must begone.

Presently she arose and offered him a florin.

'Will that repay you?' she asked.

But here the man found his tongue. 'I must have more than that,' said
he.

'It is all I have to give you,' she returned, and passed him by serenely.

Yet her heart trembled, for she saw his hand stretched forth as if to
arrest her, and his unsteady eyes wandering to his axe. A beaten path
led westward from the clearing, and she swiftly followed it. She did not
glance behind her. But as soon as the least turning of the path had
concealed her from the woodman's eyes, she slipped among the trees and
ran till she deemed herself in safety.

By this time the strong sunshine pierced in a thousand places the
pine-thatch of the forest, fired the red boles, irradiated the cool
aisles of shadow, and burned in jewels on the grass. The gum of these
trees was dearer to the senses than the gums of Araby; each pine, in the
lusty morning sunlight, burned its own wood-incense; and now and then a
breeze would rise and toss these rooted censers, and send shade and
sun-gem flitting, swift as swallows, thick as bees; and wake a brushing
bustle of sounds that murmured and went by.

On she passed, and up and down, in sun and shadow; now aloft on the bare
ridge among the rocks and birches, with the lizards and the snakes; and
anon in the deep grove among sunless pillars. Now she followed wandering
wood-paths, in the maze of valleys; and again, from a hill-top, beheld
the distant mountains and the great birds circling under the sky. She
would see afar off a nestling hamlet, and go round to avoid it. Below,
she traced the course of the foam of mountain torrents. Nearer hand, she
saw where the tender springs welled up in silence, or oozed in green
moss; or in the more favoured hollows a whole family of infant rivers
would combine, and tinkle in the stones, and lie in pools to be a
bathing-place for sparrows, or fall from the sheer rock in rods of
crystal. Upon all these things, as she still sped along in the bright
air, she looked with a rapture of surprise and a joyful fainting of the
heart; they seemed so novel, they touched so strangely home, they were so
hued and scented, they were so beset and canopied by the dome of the blue
air of heaven.

At length, when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow
pool. Stones stood in it, like islands; bulrushes fringed the coast; the
floor was paved with the pine needles; an