University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

“You disparage these scenes,” said Stevens, after several
moments had been given to the survey of that before
him, “and yet you have drawn your inspiration from them
—the fresh food which stimulates poetry and strengthens
enthusiasm. Here you learned to be contemplative; and
here, in solitude, was your genius nursed. Do not be
ungrateful, Margaret,—you owe to these very scenes all
that you are, and all that you may become.”

“Stay! before I answer. Do you see yon bird?”

“Where?”

“In the west—there!” she pointed with her finger,
catching his wrist unconsciously, at the same time, with
the other hand, as if more certainly to direct his gaze.

“I see it,—what bird is it?”

“An eagle! See how it soars and swings; effortless, as
if supported by some external power!”

“Indeed—it seems small for an eagle.”

“It is one nevertheless! There are thousands of them
that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place
thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in
the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is
about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now
within his talons, with which to feed his young. He will
feed them, and they will grow strong, and will finally use
their own wings. Shall he continue to feed them after
that? Must they never seek their own food?”

“Surely they must.”

“If these solitudes have nursed me, must they continue
to nurse me always? Must I never use the wings to which
they have given vigour? Must I never employ the sight
to which they have imparted vigilance? Must I never go
forth, and strive and soar, and make air, and earth, and sea
tributary to my wing and eye? Alas! I am a woman!—
and her name is weakness! You tell me of what I am,
and of what I may become. But what am I? I mock
myself too often with this question to believe all your fine
speeches. And what may I become? Alas! who can

tell me that? I know my strength, but I also know my
weakness. I feel the burning thoughts of my brain;—I
feel the yearning impulses in my heart;—but they bring
nothing—they promise nothing—I feel the pang of constant
denial. I feel that I can be nothing!”

“Say not so, Margaret—think not so, I beseech you.
With your genius, your enthusiasm—your powers of
expression—there is nothing, becoming in your sex, and
worthy of it, which you may not be.”

“You cannot deceive me! It might be so, if this were
Italy;—there, where the very peasant burns with passion,
and breathes his feeblest and meanest thoughts and desires
in song. But here, they already call me mad! They look
on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid me with
sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when
I am looking into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating
eye its wild yellow flashing centres, they draw their
flaxen-headed infants to their breasts, and mutter their
thanks to God, that he has not, in a fit of wrath, made
them to resemble me! If, forgetful of earth, and trees,
and the human stocks around me, I pour forth the language
of the great song-masters, they grin at my insanity
—they hold me incapable of reason, and declare their
ideas of what that is, by asking who knows most of the
dairy, the cabbage-patch, the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle—who
can best wash Polly's or Patty's face and
comb its head—can chop up sausage-meat the finest,—
make the lighest paste, and more economically dispense
the sugar in serving up the tea! and these are what is
expected of woman! These duties of the meanest slave!
From her mind nothing is expected. Her enthusiasm
terrifies, her energy offends, and if her taste is ever challenged,
it is to the figures upon a quilt or in a flower garden,
where the passion seems to be to make flowers grow in
stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has woman to
expect where such are the laws;—where such are the
expectations from her? What am I to hope? I, who
seem to be set apart—to feel nothing like the rest,—to live
in a different world—to dream of foreign things—to burn
with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak a language
which they neither understand nor like! What can
I be, in such a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not
deceive myself. I can never hope to be any thing.”

Her enthusiasm hurried her forward. In spite of himself,
Stevens was impressed. He ceased to think of his
evil purposes in the superior thoughts which her wild,
unregulated energy inspired. He scarcely wondered, indeed
—if it were true—that her neighbours fancied her insane.
The indignation of a powerful mind denied—denied justice,—baffled
in its aims,—conscious of the importance of
all its struggles against binding and blinding circumstances,
—is akin to insanity!—is apt to express itself in the defiant
tones of a fierce and feverish frenzy.

“Margaret,” said he, as she paused and waited for him,
“you are not right in every thing. You forget that your
lonely little village of Charlemont, is not only not the
world, but that it is not even an American world. America
is not Italy, I grant you, nor likely soon to become
so; but if you fancy there are not cities even in our country,
where genius such as yours would be felt and worshipped,
you are mistaken.”

“Do you believe there are such?” she demanded incredulously.

“I know there are!”

“No! no! I know better. You cannot deceive me. It
cannot be so. I know the sort of genius which is popular
in those cities. It is the gentleman and lady genius. Look
at their verses for example. I can show you thousands of
such things that come to us here, from all quarters of the
Union—verses written by nice people—people of small
tastes and petty invention, who would not venture upon
the utterance of a noble feeling, or a bold sentiment of
originality, for fear of startling the fashionable nerves with
the strong words which such a novelty would require.
Consider, in the first place, how conclusive it is of the
feeblest sort of genius that these people should employ
themselves, from morning to night, in spinning their small
strains, scraps of verse, song, and sonnet, and invariably
on such subjects of commonplace, as cannot admit of originality,
and do not therefore task reflection. Not an infant
dies or is born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its
smiles and tears are put on record; its hobby-horse, and
its infant ideas as they begin to bud and breathe aloud.
Then comes the eternal strain about summer blooms and
spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and winter's storms,
until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such are

the things that your great cities demand. Such things
content them. Speak the fearless and always strange
language of originality and strength, and you confound
and terrify them.”

“But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the
same value in the big cities as they are held by you here
in Charlemont. The intelligent people smile—they do
not applaud. If they encourage at all it is by silence.”

“No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public
opinion did not express itself. The same magazines which
bring us the verses bring us the criticism.”

“That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and
disparages those who are not. Look at the rival journal
and you will find these denounced and another set praised
and beplaistered.”

“Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities
which tolerate these things; in which the number
of just and sensible people is so small that they dare not
speak, or cannot influence those who have better courage?
Where would be my triumphs? I, who would no more
subscribe to the petty tyranny of conventional law, than
to that baser despotism which is wielded by a mercenary
editor, in the absence of a stern justice in the popular
mind. Here I may pine to death—there, my heart would
burst with its own convulsions.”

“No! Margaret, no! It is because they have not the
genius, that such small birds are let to sing. Let them but
hear the true minstrel—let them but know that there is a
muse, and how soon would the senseless twitter which
they now tolerate be hushed in undisturbing silence. In
the absence of better birds they bear with what they have.
In the absence of the true muse they build no temple—
they throng not to hear. Nay, even now, already, they
look to the west for the minstrel and the muse—to these
very woods. There is a tacit and universal feeling in the
Atlantic country, that leads them to look with expectation
to the Great West, for the genius whose song is to give
us fame. `When?' is the difficult—the only question.
Ah! might I but say to them,—`now'—the muse is already
here!”

He took her hand—she did not withhold it; but her
look was subdued—the fire had left her eyes—her whole
frame trembled with the recoil of those feelings—the relaxation

of those nerves—the tension of which we have endeavoured
feebly to display. Her cheek was no longer
flushed but pale; her lips trembled,—her voice was low
and faint,—only a broken and imperfect murmur;—and
her glance was cast upon the ground.

“You!” she exclaimed.

“Yes! I! Have I not said I am not altogether what I
seem? Ah! I may not yet say more. But I am not
without power, Margaret, in other and more powerful
regions. I too have had my triumphs—I too can boast
that the minds of other men hang for judgment upon the
utterance of mine.”

She looked upwards to his glance with a stranger expression
of timidity than her features had before expressed.
The form of Stevens had insensibly risen in seeming elevation
as he spoke, and the expression of his face was that
of a more human pride. He continued:

“My voice is one of authority in circles where yours
would be one of equal attraction and command. I cannot
promise you an Italian devotion, Margaret—our people,
though sufficiently enthusiastic, are too sensible to ridicule
to let the heart and blood speak out with such freedom as
they use in the warmer regions of the South; but the
homage will be more intellectual, more steady, and the
fame more enduring. You must let your song be heard,—
you must give me the sweet privilege of making it known
to ears whose very listening is fame.”

“Ah!” she said, “what you say makes me feel how
foolishly I have spoken. What is my song—what have I
done—what am I—what have I to hope? I have done
nothing! I am nothing! I have suffered, like a child, a
miserable vanity to delude me, and I have poured into the
ears of a stranger those ravings which I have hitherto
uttered to the hills and forests. You laugh at me now—
you must.”

The paleness on her cheek was succeeded by the deepest
flush of crimson. She withdrew her hand from his
grasp.

“Laugh at you, Margaret! You have awakened my
wonder. Struck with you when we first met,—”

“Nay, no more of that, but let us follow these windings,
they lead us to the tarn. It is the prettiest Indian path,
and my favourite spot. Here I ramble morning and eve,

and try to forget those vain imaginings, and foolish strivings
of thought, which I have just inflicted upon you.
The habit proved too much for my prudence, and I spoke
as if you were not present. Possibly, had you not spoken
in reply, I should have continued until now.”

“Why did I speak?”

“Ah! it is better. I wish you had spoken sooner. But
follow me quickly. The sunlight is now falling in a particular
line which gives us the loveliest effect, shooting its
rays through certain fissures of the rock, and making a
perfect arrow path along the water. You would fancy
that Apollo had just dismissed a golden shaft from his
quiver, so direct is the levelled light along the surface of
the lake.”

Speaking thus, they came in sight of the party on the
opposite hills, as we have already shown, without, however,
perceiving them in turn. It will be conjectured
without difficulty, that, with a nature so full of impulse,
so excitable, as that to Margaret Cooper,—particularly in
the company of an adroit man like Stevens, whose purpose
was to encourage her in that language and feeling of
egotism which, while it was the most grateful exercise to
herself, was that which most effectually served to blind
her to his designs,—her action was always animated, expressively
adapting itself not only to the words she uttered,
but, even when she did not speak, to the feelings by which
she was governed. It was the art of Stevens to say little
except by suggestives. A single word, or brief sentence
from his lips, judiciously applied to her sentiments or
situation, readily excited her to speech, and this utterance
necessarily brought with it the secret of her soul, the desire
of her heart,—nay, the very shape of the delusion which
possessed it. The wily libertine, deliberate as the demon
to which we have likened him, could provoke the warmth
which he did not share—could stimulate the eloquence
which he would not feel—could, coldly, like some Mephistopheles
of science, subject the golden winged bird or
butterfly, to the torturous process of examination, with a
pin thrust through its vitals, and gravely dilate on its properties,
its rich plumage, and elaborate finish of detail,
without giving heed to those writhings which declared its
agonies. It is not meant to be understood that Stevens
found no pleasure himself in the display of that wild, unschooled

imagination which was the prevailing quality in
the mind of Margaret Cooper. He was a man of education
and taste. He could be pleased as an amateur; but
he wanted the moral to be touched, and to sympathize
with a being so gifted and so feeble,—so high aiming, yet
so liable to fall.

The ardour of Margaret Cooper, and the profound devotion
which it was the policy of Stevens to display, necessarily
established their acquaintance, in a very short time, on
the closest footing of familiarity. With a nature such as
hers, all that is wanted is sympathy—all that she craves
is sympathy—and to win this, no toil is too great, no
sufferance too severe;—alas! how frequently do we see
that no penalty is too discouraging. But the confiding
spirit never looks for penalties, and seldom dreams of
deceit. What then were the emotions of William Hinkley
as he beheld the cordiality which distinguished the manner
of Margaret Cooper as she approached the edge of the
lake with her companion. In the space of a single week
this stranger had made greater progress in her acquaintance,
than he had been able to make in a period of years. The
problem which distressed him was beyond his power to
solve. His heart was very full. The moisture was already
in his eyes; and when he beheld the animated gestures of
the maid—when he saw her turn to her companion, and
meet his gaze without shrinking, while her own was fixed
in gratified contemplation—he scarcely restrained himself
from jumping to his feet. The old man saw his emotion.

“William,” he said, “did I understand you that this
young stranger was a preacher?”

“No, sir,—but he seeks to be one. He is studying for
the ministry, under Brother Cross.”

“Brother Cross is a good man, and is scarcely likely to
have any thing to do with any other than good men. I
suppose he knows every thing about the stranger?”

William Hinkley narrated all that was known on the subject
in the village. In the innocence of his heart, Brother
Cross had described Alfred Stevens as a monument of his
own powers of conversion. Under God, he had been a
blessed instrument for plucking this brand from the burning.
A modified account of the brandy-flask accompanied
the narrative. Whether it was that Mr. Calvert, who had

been a man of the world, saw something in the story itself,
and in the ludicrousness of the event, which awakened his
suspicions; or, whether the carriage of Alfred Stevens, as
he walked with Margaret Cooper, was rather that of a
young gallant than a young student in theology, may admit
of question; but it was very certain that the suspicions of
the old gentleman were somewhat awakened. Believing
himself to be alone with his fair companion, Alfred Stevens
was not as scrupulous of the rigidity of manner, which, if
not actually prescribed to persons occupying his professional
position, is certainly expected from them; and by
a thousand little acts of gallantry, he proved himself much
more at home as a courtier, and ladies' man, than as one
filled with the overflow of divine grace, and thoughtful of
nothing less than the serious earnest of his own soul. His
hand was promptly extended to assist the progress of his
fair companion,—a service which was singularly unnecessary
in the case of one to whom daily rambles, over hill
and through forest, had imparted a most unfeminine degree
of vigour. Now he broke the branch away from before her
path; and now, stooping suddenly he gathered for her the
pale flower of autumn. These little acts of courtesy, so
natural to the gentleman, were any thing but natural to one
suddenly impressed with the ascetical temper of Methodism.
Highly becoming in both instances, they were yet strangely
at variance with the straight-laced practices of the thoroughgoing
Wesleyan, who fancies that the condition of souls is
so desperate as to leave no time for good manners. Mr.
Calvert had no fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there
was certainly an inconsistency between his deportment
now, and those characteristics which were to be predicated
of the manner and mode of his very recent conversion.
Besides, there was the story of the brandy-flask, in which
Calvert saw much less of honour, either to John Cross or
his neophyte. But the old man did not express his doubts
to his young friend, and they sat together, watching, in a
silence only occasionally broken by a monosyllable, the
progress of the unconscious couple below.

Meanwhile, our fisherman, occupying his lonely perch
just above the stream had been plying his vocation with
all the silent deligence of one to the manner born. Once
busy with his angle, and his world equally of thought and

observation, became confined to the stream before his eyes,
and the victim before his imagination. Scarcely seen by
his companions on the heights above, he had succeeded in
taking several very fine fish, and had his liberality been
limited to the supper table of his venerable friend, Calvert,
he would long before have given himself respite, and temporary
immunity to the rest of the finny tribe remaining
in the tarn. But, Ned Hinkley thought of all his neighbours,
not omitting the two rival widows, Mesdames
Cooper and Thackeray. Something too, there was in the
sport, which, on the present occasion, beguiled him rather
longer than his wont. More than once had his eye detected,
from the advantageous and jutting rock where he
lay concealed, just above the water, the dark outlines of a
fish, one of the largest he had ever seen in the lake, whose
brown sides, and occasionally flashing fins, excited his
imagination and offered a challenge to his skill, which
provoked him into something like a feeling of personal
hostility. The fish moved slowly to and fro, not often in
sight, but at such regularly recurring periods as to keep
up the exciting desire which his very first appearance had
awakened in the mind of his enemy. To Ned Hinkley
he was the beau ideal of the trout genus. He was certainly
the hermit trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such
strength, such size, such an outline, and then such sagacity.
That trout was a triton among his brethren. A
sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes. Ned Hinkley could
imagine—for on such subjects his imagination kindled—
how like an oracle must be the words of such a trout, to
his brethren, gathering in council in their deep-down hole,
—or, driven by a shower under the cypress log, or in any
other situation in which an oracle would be apt to say,
looking around him with fierceness mingled with contempt
—“let no dog bark.” Ned Hinkley could also fancy the
contemplations of such a trout as he witnessed the efforts
made to beguile him out of the water. “Not to be caught
by a fly like that,—my lad!” and, precisely as if the trout
had spoken what was certainly whispered in his own mind,
the fisherman silently changed his gilded, glittering figure
on his hook for one of browner plumage,—one of the
autumn tribe of flies which stoop to the water from the
overhanging trees, and glide off for twenty paces in
the stream, to dart up again to the trees, in as many
seconds, if not swallowed by some watchful fisher-trout,
like the one then before the eyes of our companion.
Though his fancy had become excited, Ned Hinkley was
not impatient. With a cautions hand he conducted the fly
down the stream with the flickering fidgetty motion which
the real insect would have employed. The keen-nosed
trout turned with the movements of the fly, but philosophically
kept aloof. Now he might be seen to sink, now
to rise, now he glided close under the rock where the
angle reclined, and, even in the very deep waters which
were there, which were consequently very dark, so great
was the size of the animal, that its brown outline was yet
to be seen, with its slightly waving tail, and at moments
the flash of its glittering eye, as, inclining on its side, it
glanced cunningly upward through the water. Again did
Ned Hinkley consult his resources. Fly after fly was
taken from his box, and suffered to glide upon the stream.
The wary fish did not fail to bestow some degree of attention
upon each, but his regards were too deliberate for the
success of the angler, and he had almost began to despair,
when he observed a slight quivering movement in the
object of pursuit which usually prepares the good sportsman
to expect his prey. The fins were laid aback. The
motion of the fish became steady; a slight vibration of
the tail only was visible; and in another moment he
darted, and was hooked. Then came the struggle. Ned
Hinkley had never met with a more formidable prey.
The reel was freely given, but the strain was great
upon shaft and line. There was no such thing as contending.
The trout had his way, and went down and
off, though it might have been observed that the fisherman
took good care to baffle his efforts to retreat in the direction
of the old log which had harboured him, and the
tangling alders, which might have been his safest places of
retreat. The fish carried a long stretch of line, but the
hook was still in his jaws, and this little annoyance soon
led him upon other courses. The line became relaxed,
and with this sign, Ned Hinkley began to amuse himself
in tiring his victim. This required skill and promptness
rather than strength. The hermit-trout was led to and
fro by a judicious turn of wrist or elbow. His efforts had
subsided to a few spasmodic struggles—an occasional
struggle ending with a shiver, and then he was brought to
the surface. This was followed by a last great convulsive
effort, when his tail churned the water into a little circle of
foam, which disappeared the moment his struggles were
over. But a few seconds more were necessary to lift the
prey into sight of all the parties near to the lake. They
had seen some of the struggle, and had imagined the rest.
Neither Margaret Cooper nor Stevens had suspected the
presence of the fisherman until drawn to the spot by this
trial of strength.

“What a prodigious fish!” exclaimed Stevens; “can
we go to the spot?”

“Oh! easily—up the rocks on the left there is a path.
I know it well. I have traversed it often. Will you go?
The view is very fine from that quarter.”

“Surely—but who is the fisherman?”

“Ned Hinkley, the nephew of the gentleman with
whom you stay. He is a hunter, fisherman, musician,
every thing. A lively, simple, but well-meaning young
person. It is something strange that his cousin William
Hinkley is not with him. They are usually inseparable.”

And with these words she led the way for her companion
following the edge of the lake until reaching the
point where the rocks seemed to form barriers to their
farther progress, but which her agility and energy had long
since enabled her to overcome.

“A bold damsel!” said Calvert, as he viewed her progress.
“She certainly does not intend to clamber over
that range of precipices. She will peril her life.”

“No!” said William Hinkley—“she had done it often
to my great terror. I have been with her more than once
over the spot myself. She seems to me to have no fear,
and to delight in the most dangerous places.”

“But her companion! If he's not a more active man
than he seems he will hardly succeed so well.”

William was silent, his eye watching with the keenest
interest the progress of the two. In a few moments he
started to his feet with some appearance of surprise.

“What's the matter?” demanded Calvert.

“She does not seem as if she wished to ascend the
rocks, but she's aiming to keep along the ledges that overhang
the stream, so as to get where Ned is. That can

hardly be done by the surest-footed and most active.
Many of the rocks are loose. The ledge is very narrow,
and even where there is room for the feet there are such
projections above as leave no room for the body. I will
halloo to her, and tell her of the danger.”

“If you halloo, you will increase the danger,—you will
alarm her;” said the old man.

“It will be best to stop her now, in season,—when she
can go back. Stay for me, sir, I can run along on the
heights so as to overlook them, and can then warn without
alarming.”

“Do so, my son, and hasten, for she seems bent on
going forward. The preacher follows but slowly, and she
stops for him. Away!”

The youth darted along the hill, pursuing something of
a table-line which belonged to the equal elevation of the
range of rock on which he stood. The rock was formed
of successive and shelving ledges, at such intervals, however,
as to make it no easy task—certainly no safe one,
—to drop from one to the other. The perch of Ned
Hinkley, was a projection from the lowest of these ledges,
running brokenly along the margin of the basin until lost
in the forest slope over which Margaret Cooper had led
her companion. If it was a task to try the best vigour
and agility—to say nothing of courage—of the ablest
mountaineer, to ascend the abrupt ledges from below,
aiming at the highest point of elevation,—the attempt was
still more startling to follow the lower ledges, some of
which hung, loosened and tottering, just above the deepest
parts of the lake. Yet, with that intrepidity which marked
her character, this was the very task which Margaret
Cooper had proposed to herself. William Hinkley had
justly said that she did not seem to know fear; and when
Stevens with the natural sense of caution which belongs
to one to whom such performances are unusual, suggested
to her that such a pathway seemed very dangerous—

“Dangerous!” she exclaimed, standing upon the merest
pinnacle of a loosened fragment which rested on the very
margin of the stream. “Did you never perceive that
there was a loveliness in danger which you scarcely felt
to be half so great in any other object or situation. I love
the dangerous. It seems to lift my soul, to make my heart
bound with joy and the wildest delight. I know nothing

so delightful as storm and thunder. I look, and see the
tall trees shivering and going down with a roar, and feel
that I could sing—sing aloud,—and believe that there are
voices, like mine, then singing through all the tempest.
But there is no danger here. I have clambered up these
ledges repeatedly—up to the very top. Here, you see,
we have an even pathway along the edge. We have
nothing to do but to set the foot down firmly.”

But Stevens was not so sure, and his opinion on the
beauties of the dangerous did not chime exactly with hers.
Still, he did not lack for courage, and his pride did not
suffer him to yield in a contest with a female. He gazed
on her with increasing wonder. If he saw no loveliness
in danger—he saw no little loveliness just then in her; and
she might be said to personify danger to his eyes. Her
tall, symmetrical and commanding figure, perched on the
trembling pinnacle of rock which sustained her, was as
firm and erect as if she stood on the securest spot of land.
Nor was her position that of simple security and firmness.
The grace of her attitude, her extended and gently waving
arm as she spoke, denoted a confidence which could only
have arisen from a perfect unconsciousness of danger.
Her swan-like neck, with the face slightly turned back to
him; the bright flashing eyes, and the smile of equal pride
and dignity on her exquisitely chiselled mouth;—all
formed a picture for the artist's study, which almost served
to divert the thoughts of Stevens from the feeling of danger
which he expressed. While he gazed, he heard a
voice calling in tones of warning from above; and, at the
sound, he perceived a change in the expression of Margaret
Cooper's face, from confidence and pride, to scorn and
contempt. At the same time she darted forward from rock
to rock, with a sort of defying haste, which made him
tremble for her safety, and left him incapable to follow.
The call was repeated; and Stevens looked up, and recognised
the person of the youth whom he had counselled
that morning with such bad success. If the progress of
Margaret Cooper appeared dangerous in his sight, that of
the young man was evidently more so. He was leaping,
with the cool indifference of one who valued his life not a
pin's fee, from ledge to ledge, down the long steppes which
separated the several reaches of the rock formation. The

space between was very considerable, the descent abrupt;
the youth had no steadying pole to assist him, but flying
rather than leaping, was now beheld in air, and in the
next moment stood balancing himself with difficulty, but
with success, and without seeming apprehension, on the
pinnacle of rock below him. In this way he was approaching
the lower ledge along which Margaret Cooper
was hurrying as rapidly as fearlessly, and calling to her
as he came, implored her to forbear a progress which was
so full of danger. Stevens fancied he had no reason to
love the youth, but he could not help admiring and envying
his equal boldness and agility; the muscular ease with
which he flung himself from point to point, and his sure-footed
descent upon the crags and fragments which trembled
and tottered beneath the sudden and unaccustomed
burden. Charitably wishing that, amidst all his agility he
might yet make a false step, and find an unexpected and
rather cold bath in the lake below, Stevens now turned his
eyes upon Margaret Cooper. She did not answer the
counsels of William Hinkley—certainly did not heed them:
and, but for the increased impatience of her manner might
be supposed not to have heard them. The space between
herself and Stevens had increased meanwhile, and looking
back, she waited for his approach. She stood on a heavy
mass which jutted above the lake, and not six feet from
the water. Her right foot was upon the stone, sustaining
the whole weight of her person. Her left was advanced
and lifted to another fragment which lay beyond. As she
looked back she met the eyes of Stevens. Just then he
saw the large fragment yield beneath her feet. She seemed
suddenly conscious of it in the same moment, and sprung
rapidly on that to which her left foot was already advanced.
The impetus of this movement, sent the rock over which
she had left. This disturbed the balance of that to which
she had risen, and while his breath hung suspended in the
utterance of the meditated warning, the catastrophe had
taken place. The stone shrank from beneath her, and,
sinking with it, in another moment, she was hidden from
sight in the still, deep waters of the lake.