One evening as I paused, looking delighted upon the scene of enchantment, a new feature was, as if by magic, added to the picture. A little girl—a child of surpassing loveliness—slipped out from among the bushes, and, skipping from stone to stone, stood on a high rock, near the middle of the current—the beau ideal of such a sprite as one might fancy inhabiting the spot. Her loose tresses floated on the evening breeze, and her scanty drapery—it was mid-summer—as the wind pressed it against her form, exhibited a delicacy and grace of contour which that artist would become immortal who could copy. She did not at first perceive me; and when the flash of my oar startled her, I almost expected she would prove herself a vision, by vanishing into the sky above in a cloud, or dissolving in a foam-wreath in the water which rippled among the rocks behind her. But youth and innocence are courageous; and she took no other notice of my approach than to seat herself, to await my coming, upon the same stone on which she had been standing. Her artless ease and beauty won my heart—as men’s hearts are often too easily won, through the eyes. Hers was grace unaffected and natural. No drawing-room belle, after years of practice before her mirror, could have vied with this rustic nymph. She possessed what art can with difficulty imitate, and that never entirely—perfect and unconscious self-possession; and she was the more admirable, that in her child-like simplicity she dreamed not of admiration. I pushed my shallop up beside the rock, and commenced a conversation with her. I was grieved and amazed to find her helplessly ignorant upon the commonest subjects which those who fear God teach their children. She could not even read, she told me. She was born far away, she said—in another land, mother used to say—and did not remember that she ever went to church; but mother had told her that she was carried there once to be baptized, and her name was Bessie. “Is your mother dead?” I asked. “No—not dead—I think not; but father—” A hoarse voice from the shore now shouted her name; and, unalarmed as she had been when I approached, her little frame now shook with terror, and her interesting face was pale and sullen with mingled fear and anger. “Is that your father?” I said.