So Miss Hofmann turned the horse toward the cottage, which stood at the head of a lane, a few yards from the road. A little boy and girl, with bare heads and bare feet,--the former members very white and the latter very black,--came out to meet her. Caroline greeted them good-humoredly in German. The girl, who was the elder, consented to watch the horse, while the boy volunteered to show the visitors the shortest way to the river. Mason reached the point in question without great fatigue, and found a prospect which would have repaid even greater trouble. To the right and to the left, a hundred feet below them, stretched the broad channel of the seaward-shifting waters. In the distance rose the gentle masses of the Catskills with all the intervening region vague and neutral in the gathering twilight. A faint odor of coolness came up to their faces from the stream below. "You can sit down," said the little boy, doing the honors. "Yes, Colonel, sit down," said Caroline. "You've already been on your feet too much." Ferdinand obediently seated himself, unable to deny that he was glad to do so. Miss Hofmann released from her grasp the skirts which she had gathered up in her passage from the phaeton, and strolled to the edge of the cliff, where she stood for some moments talking with her little guide. Mason could only hear that she was speaking German. After the lapse of a few moments Miss Hofmann turned back, still talking--or rather listening--to the child. "He's very pretty," she said in French, as she stopped before Ferdinand. Mason broke into a laugh. "To think," said he, "that that little youngster should forbid us the use of two languages! Do you speak French, my child?" "No," said the boy, sturdily, "I speak German." "Ah, there I can't follow you!" The child stared a moment, and then replied, with pardonable irrelevancy, "I'll show you the way down to the water." "There I can't follow you either. I hope you'll not go, Miss Hofmann," added the young man, observing a movement on Caroline's part. "Is it hard?" she asked of the child. "No, it's easy." "Will I tear my dress?" The child shook his head; and Caroline descended the bank under his guidance. As some moments elapsed before she reappeared, Ferdinand ventured to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. She was sitting on a rock on the narrow margin of sand, with her hat in her lap, twisting the feather in her fingers. In a few moments it seemed to Ferdinand that he caught the tones of her voice, wafted upward as if she were gently singing. He listened intently, and at last succeeded in distinguishing several words; they were German. "Confound her German!" thought the young man. Suddenly Miss Hofmann rose from her seat, and, after a short interval, reappeared on the platform. "What did you find down there?" asked Ferdinand, almost savagely. "Nothing,--a little strip of a beach and a pile of stones." "You _have_ torn your dress," said Mason.