About three weeks after I became, in that sad way, the mistress, escaping one day from lawyers and agents, who held me in dreary interview, with long computations of this and of that, and formalities almost endless, I went, for a breath of good earnest fresh air, beyond precinct of garden or shrubbery. To me these seemed in mild weather to temper and humanize the wind too strictly, and take the wild spirit out of it; and now, for the turn of the moment, no wind could be too rough to tumble in. After long months of hard trouble, and worry, and fear, and sad shame, and deep sorrow, the natural spring of clear youth into air and freedom set me upward. For the nonce there was nothing upon my selfish self to keep it downward; troubles were bubbles, and grief a low thief, and reason almost treason. I drank the fine fountain of air unsullied, and the golden light stamped with the royalty of sun. Hilarious moments are but short, and soon cold sense comes back again. Already I began to feel ashamed of young life's selfish outburst, and the vehement spring of mere bodily health. On this account I sat down sadly in a little cove of hill, whereto the soft breeze from the river came up, with a tone of wavelets, and a sprightly water-gleam. And here, in fern and yellow grass and tufted bights of bottom growth, the wind made entry for the sun, and they played with one another. Besting here, and thinking, with my face between my hands, I wondered what would be the end. Nothing seemed secure or certain, nothing even steady or amenable to foresight. Even guess-work or the wider cast of dreams was always wrong. To-day the hills and valleys, and the glorious woods of wreathen gold, bright garnet, and deep amethyst, even that blue river yet unvexed by autumn's turbulence, and bordered with green pasture of a thousand sheep and cattle--to-day they all were mine (so far as mortal can hold ownership)--to-morrow, not a stick, or twig, or blade of grass, or fallen leaf, but might call me a trespasser. To see them while they still were mine, and to regard them humbly, I rose and took my black hat off--a black hat trimmed with mourning gray. Then turning round, I met a gaze, the wildest, darkest, and most awful ever fixed on human face. “Who are you? What do you want here?” I faltered forth, while shrinking back for flight, yet dreading or unable to withdraw my gaze from his. The hollow ground barred all escape; my own land was a pit for me, and I must face this horror out. Here, afar from house or refuge, hand of help, or eye of witness, front to front I must encounter this atrocious murderer. For moments, which were ages to me, he stood there without a word; and daring not to take my eyes from his, lest he should leap at me, I had no power (except of instinct), and could form no thought of him, for mortal fear fell over me. If he would only speak, would only move his lips, or any thing!