“I found New York the noisiest city in the world, and felt that a week’s tenure would drive me mad.  A fire occurred in Broadway the night of my arrival, and the din of the mobs which ran to its relief was greater than all the combined clamors of Europe.  So I resorted to a beautiful village called Wyoming, in the heart of the Susquehanna mountains, and passed the month of September in comparative quiet.  If any place in the world is shut in from brawls and storms, it is this historic valley.  Its reminiscences were sad and painful to me, but its scenes were like soft dreams.

“During a part of my tenure in the village I missed my shadowy attendants; but when, one day, I ascended to Prospect Rock, I heard amid the hum of farms and mines and mills, those same audible repetitions floating up the sides of the mountain.  The valley grew dim upon my sight, and I hastened nervously to my cottage.  Thenceforward I seldom lost them.  When I penetrated the wild glen of the Lackawanna, or climbed the Umbrella Tree, or ventured into the Wolf’s Den, or sat upon Queen Esther’s Rock, or sailed upon Harvey’s Lake, they followed me, the one lulling, the other maddening—­invisible but omnipresent types of the good and the evil which forever hover in the air.

“One day I ventured to Falling Waters, a reservoir which is precipitated from a cliff, called Campbell’s Ridge, into a gorge of the Shawnee Mountains.  The deafening roar of the cataract would be almost deathly to me; but, strengthened by the promise of Heraine, I determined to add this achievement to the long list of inflictions endured for her sake.

“I made the ascent on foot, and could see, from the base of the ridge, the skein of foam shining through the pines in its everlasting flight down the rocks.  I became accustomed to the sound as I gradually approached, and mused, with gladness, of an early return to England.  Heraine would acknowledge my vindication.  Suffering more anguish from a sunbeam or a song than others from the knout or the rack, I had yet run the gauntlet of the intensest horrors, cheered by the certainty of her regard.  She would confess her error.  We should shut out the world again from our shadowy home at Glengoyle, and go down together, hand in hand, to a deeper stillness.  As I mused thus I heard the haunting footfalls again, going up the mountain before me.  To my delight, their attendant demon was inaudible, and I pursued them rapturously.  The rush of waters grew louder.  They had moaned before; they shrieked and screamed now, as if in the agony of their suicidal leap.  But, clear and musical, above the hell of sound rang the tinkling feet which had led me around the globe.

“I called aloud.  I quickened my pace.  I could see only in glimpses through my tears; but along the steep sinuosities of the path something fluttered and vanished, and fluttered again—­I recognized Heraine.