If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young pupil for saving him from an imminent peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity to know why he should have needed such aid.  He, an active, muscular, courageous, adventurous young fellow, with a stick in his hand, ready to hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his way, to stand still, staring into those two eyes, until they came up close to him, and the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him stiff where he stood,—­what was the meaning of it?  Again, what was the influence this girl had exerted, under which the venomous creature had collapsed in such a sudden way?  Whether he had been awake or dreaming he did not feel quite sure.  He knew he had gone up The Mountain, at any rate; he knew he had come down The Mountain with the girl walking just before him;—­there was no forgetting her figure, as she walked on in silence, her braided locks falling a little, for want of the lost hair-pin, perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of—­Shame on such fancies!—­to wrong that supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush of shining black hair, that, shaken loose, would cloud her all round, like Godiva, from brow to instep!  He was sure he had sat down before the fissure or cave.  He was sure that he was led softly away from the place, and that it was Elsie who had led him.  There was the hair-pin to show that so far it was not a dream.  But between these recollections came a strange confusion; and the more the master thought, the more he was perplexed to know whether she had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on the stone, from some frightful dream, such as may come in a very brief slumber, or whether she had bewitched him into a trance with those strange eyes of hers, or whether it was all true, and he must solve its problem as he best might.

There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.  As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr. Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had heard of as a cousin of the young girl.  As Cousin Richard Venner, the person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of Mr. Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he had an enemy in this handsome youth,—­an enemy, too, who was like to be subtle and dangerous.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or later.  He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him.  Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his investigations.  Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of fellow, and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious, romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and psychological inquiries he was about instituting.