His steady will worked unceasingly onwards, and his really superior talents enabled him in a surprisingly short time to bring himself up to his age, and to recover lost time. He sat many hours, even then, with his books, in the sacristan's garden. But the old way of talking was out of the question, and Mary felt, but too well, that she was doubly parted, both from instruction and from the friend of her childhood. CHAPTER IV. Autumn interrupted for a time the boy's studies. The rector determined to take him with him for some days into the neighbouring mountains, before the winter set in, to show him hill-side and valley, and to let him have a wider look into that world which already seemed so beautiful to him, even on the barren village plains. When the boy was told of it he asked, "And we shall take Mary with us too?" They tried to dissuade him from it, but without her he refused to travel. "Even if she does not see anything, they say the mountain air is so healthy, and she has been so pale and thin for a long time, and will be quite lonely without me." So they did as he wished; the little maiden was lifted into the carriage beside him, and a short day's journey brought them to the foot of the mountain range. Now began the journey on foot. Patiently the boy led his blind little friend, more reserved than ever. Often he longed to climb this or that isolated rock-peak which promised him a new view, but he supported her as she went, and would not desert his post, however much his parents begged him. Only when they had reached some eminence, and were seated at rest in a shady nook, did he leave the maiden, and sought his own way amongst the dangerous rocks, collecting curious stones, or flowers that did not grow in the plains below. When he returned to the resting-place he had ever something for Mary--berries, or a sweet-scented flower, or the soft nest of a bird which the wind had dislodged from its tree. She received everything cheerfully from him, and seemed more contented than she had been at home. And she was so, too; for she breathed the same air with him all the day long. But even then her foolish jealousy accompanied her, and she felt angry with the mountains, whose autumnal beauty, she fancied, only made the world dearer to him, and widened the separation between them. Her strange manner struck the rector's wife. She talked with her husband now and again about the child, who was as dear to them as their own, and both placed her obstinate melancholy to the account of her disappointed hopes; and yet she regretted nothing that had been promised, or that she had been told to expect--only what she had already known and enjoyed.