He said this in a tone of airy badinage which Mary seemed to appreciate; but he gravely wondered what he could do with her, and how he should replace her, if she fell seriously ill.

For the last two days farm-houses and cultivated fields had been growing rarer and rarer, and the road rougher and wilder.  At times it made a sudden detour, to avoid the outcropping of a monster stratum of granite, and in places became so narrow that the rank huckleberry-bushes swept the mare’s flanks.  Lynde found it advisable on the morning in question to pick his way carefully.  A range of arid hills rose darkly before him, stretching east and west further than his eye could follow—­rugged, forlorn hills covered with a thick prickly undergrowth, and sentinelled by phantom-like pines.  There were gloomy, rocky gorges on each hand, and high-hanging crags, and where the vapor was drawn aside like a veil, in one place, he saw two or three peaks with what appeared to be patches of snow on them.  Perhaps they were merely patches of bleached rock.

Long afterwards, when Edward Lynde was passing through the valley of the Arve, on the way from Geneva to Chamouni, he recollected this bit of Switzerland in America, and it brought an odd, perplexed smile to his lips.

The thousand ghostly shapes of mist which had thronged the heights, shutting in the prospect on every side, had now vanished, discovering as wild and melancholy a spot as a romantic heart could desire.  There was something sinister and ironical even in the sunshine that lighted up these bleak hills.  The silver waters of a spring—­whose source was hidden somewhere high up among the mossy boulders—­dripping silently from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears.  The deathly stillness was broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a blasted pine.  Here and there a birch with its white satin skin glimmered spectrally among the sombre foliage.

The inarticulate sadness of the place brought a momentary feeling of depression to Lynde, who was not usually given to moods except of the lighter sort.  He touched Mary sharply with the spurs and cantered up the steep.

He had nearly gained the summit of the hill when he felt the saddle slipping; the girth had unbuckled or broken.  As he dismounted, the saddle came off with him, his foot still in the stirrup.  The mare shied, and the rein slipped from his fingers; he clutched at it, but Mary gave a vicious toss of the head, wheeled about, and began trotting down the declivity.  Her trot at once broke into a gallop, and the gallop into a full run—­a full run for Mary.  At the foot of the hill she stumbled, fell, rolled over, gathered herself up, and started off again at increased speed.  The road was perfectly straight for a mile or two.  The horse was already a small yellow patch in the distance.  She was evidently on her way back to Rivermouth!  Lynde watched her until she was nothing but a speck against the gray road, then he turned and cast a rueful glance on the saddle, which suddenly took to itself a satirical aspect, as it lay sprawling on the ground at his feet.