With such a mood upon her, it was no wonder that on arriving at Mountain Spring she speedily made out her errand.  She found whom and what she had come for; she filled her basket with no loss of time or pleasure; and very proud of her success set out again through the wood-path homeward.

Half way back to the bit of tree-enclosed meadow-ground, the path and the north shore of Shahweetah approached each other, where a little bay curve, no other than the AEgean Sea, swept in among the rocks.  Through the stems of the trees Elizabeth could see the blue water with the brightness of the hour upon it.  Its sparkle tempted her.  She had plenty of time, or she resolved that she had, and she wanted to look at the fair broad view she knew the shore edge would give her.  She hesitated, and turned, A few bounding and plunging steps amid rocks and huckleberry bushes brought her where she wished to be.  She stood on the border, where no trees came in the way of the northern view.  The mountains were full before her, and the wide Shatemuc rolled down between them, ruffled with little waves, every one sparkling cool in the sunlight.  Elizabeth looked at the water a minute, and turned to the west.  Wut-a-qut-o’s head had caught more of the frosts than Shahweetah had felt yet; there were broad belts of buff and yellow along the mountain, even changing into sear where its sides felt the north wind.  On all that shore the full sunlight lay.  The opposite hills, on the east, were in dainty sunshine and shadow, every undulation, every ridge and hollow, softly marked out.  With what wonderful sharp outline the mountain edges rose against the bright sky; how wonderful soft the changes of shade and colour adown their sloping sides; what brilliant little ripples of water rolled up to the pebbles at Elizabeth’s feet.  She stood and looked at it all, at one thing and the other, half dazzled with the beauty; until she recollected herself, and with a deep sighful expression of thoughts and wishes unknown, turned away to find her path again.

But she could not find it.  Whereabouts it was, she was sure; but the where was an unfindable thing.  And she dared not strike forward without the track; she might get further and further from it, and never get home to breakfast at all! —­ There was nothing for it but to grope about seeking for indications; and Miss Haye’s eyes were untrained to wood-work.  The woodland was a mazy wilderness now indeed.  Points of stone, beds of moss, cat-briar vines and huckleberry bushes, in every direction; and between which of them lay that little invisible track of a footpath?  The more she looked the more she got perplexed.  She could remember no waymarks.  The way was all cat-briars, moss, bushes, and rocks; and rocks, bushes, moss and cat-briars were in every variety all around her.  She turned her face towards the quarter from which she had come and tried to recognize some tree or waymark she could remember having passed.  One part of the wood looked just like another; but for the mountains and the river she could not have told where lay Mountain Spring.