and not a bitterness; if she could begin by holding herself undisturbed, though obliged to wear a collar that stood up behind and turned over in front with those lappet corners she had always thought so ugly,—­yes, even though the waterfall should leak out and ripple over stubbornly,—­though these things must go on for twenty-four hours at least, and these twenty-four hours be spent unwillingly in a dull country tavern, where the windows looked out from one side into a village street, and from the other into stable and clothes yards!  There would be something for her to do:  to keep bright and help to keep the others bright.  There was a hope in it; the life was more than raiment; it was better worth while than to have only got on the nice round collar and dainty cuffs that fitted and suited her, or even the little bead net that came over in a Marie Stuart point so prettily between the small crimped puffs of her hair.

A little matter, nothing to be self-applauding about,—­only a straw; but—­if it showed the possible way of the wind, the motive power that might be courted to set through her life, taking her out of the trade-currents of vanity?  Might she have it in her, after all?  Might she even be able to come, if need be, to the strength of mind for wearing an old gray straw bonnet, and bearing to be forty years old, and helping to adorn the young and beautiful for looks that never—­just so—­should be bent again on her?

Leslie Goldthwaite had read of martyr and hero sufferance all her life, as she had looked upon her poor one-eyed fellow-traveler to-day; the pang of sympathy had always been:  “These things have been borne, are being borne, in the world; how much of the least of them could I endure,—­I, looking for even the little things of life to be made smooth?” It depended, she began faintly and afar off to see, upon where the true life lay; how far behind the mere outer covering vitality withdrew itself.

CHAPTER IV.

MARMADUKE WHARNE.

Up—­up—­up,—­from glory to glory!

This was what it seemed to Leslie Goldthwaite, riding, that golden June morning, over the road that threaded along, always climbing, the chain of hills that could be climbed, into the nearer and nearer presence of those mountain majesties, penetrating farther and father into the grand solitudes sentineled forever by their inaccessible pride.

Mrs. Linceford had grown impatient; she had declared it impossible, when the splendid sunshine of that next day challenged them forth out of their dull sojourn, to remain there twenty-four hours longer, waiting for anything.  Trunks or none, she would go on, and wait at Jefferson, at least, where there was something to console one.  All possible precaution was taken; all possible promises were made; the luggage should be sent on next day,—­perhaps that very night; wagons were going and returning often now;