Madge had her share of adventures, too; one dark night she came near drowning in Lake Washington. Having visited the Newcastle coal mines with a small party of friends and returned to the lake shore, they were on the wharf ready to go on board the steamer. In some manner, perhaps from inadequate lighting, she stepped backward and fell into the water some distance below. The water was perhaps forty feet deep, the mud unknown. Several men called for "A rope! A rope!" but not a rope could they lay their hands on. After what seemed an age to her, a lantern flashed into the darkness and a long pole held by seven men was held down to her; she grasped it firmly and, as she afterward said, felt as if she could climb to the moon with its assistance--and was safely drawn up, taken to a miner's cottage, where a kind-hearted woman dressed her in dry clothing. She reached home none the worse for her narrow escape. Her nerves were nerves of steel; she seldom exhibited a shadow of fear and seemed of a spirit to undertake any daring feat. To dare the darkness, climb declivities, explore recesses, seemed pleasures to her courageous nature. At Snoqualmie Falls, in the Archipelago de Haro, in the Jupiter Hills of the Olympic Range, she climbed up and down the steep gorges with the agility of the chamois or our own mountain goat. The forest, the mountain, the seashore yielded their charm to her, each gave their messages. In a collection which she culled from many sources, ranging from sparkling gayety to profound seriousness, occur these words: "I saw the long line of the vacant shore The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand And the brown rocks left bare on every hand As if the ebbing tide would flow no more. Then heard I more distinctly than before, The ocean breathe and its great breast expand, And hurrying came on the defenseless land, The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar; All thought and feeling and desire, I said Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song Have ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er me They swept again from their deep ocean bed, And in a tumult of delight and strong As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me." It must have been that "Bird and bee and blossom taught her Love's spell to know," and then she went away to the "land where Love itself had birth." CHAPTER Vb. LIKE A FOREST FLOWER. ANNA LOUISA DENNY.