She watched him winding up the little narrow path, and disappearing among the trees, and then she turned into the house, to wash up the breakfast service and set the room in order. It was a queer day—that first one that she spent alone in her cabin. After arranging her corner cupboard and sweeping her room, and making a few little alterations and improvements in the disposition of her lighter furniture, she unpacked her sewing materials and sat down in the door to needlework. The primeval forest all around her, even up to the house, the blue sky above, and the log cabin, in the door of which she sat, was all that met the eye; the trilling songs of the wood birds, and the ripple-ripple of the trickling spring in the deep dell near, was all that met the ear. And yet she was not lonesome—she loved this solitude—the manifest presence of God filled it, and heart and mind received the holy, the elevating, the joyous influence. The day advanced—the sparkling freshness of the morning mellowed into noon. And then she got up and took a pitcher and went down to the spring, that seemed to have been calling her in its merry voice all the morning. A narrow, steep path down into the dingle led to the spring, and beyond it arose a high hill, heavily wooded, like all the land about there. She filled her pitcher, and returned to the house to take her lonely noontide luncheon. And then, as the meridian sun was pouring its rays in at the door, which you know faced the south, she removed her needlework to the west window, and resumed her sewing. Day waned; nor was she conscious of its waning until the burning sun began to glance in at her through the window where she sat, and oblige her to take her work to the opposite one—smiling at the conceit of being chased from place to place by Apollo. She sat at the cool east window, until the striking of the clock warned her that it was time to prepare the afternoon meal, which was to comprise “dinner and supper together.” She arose, and put away her work. But what was there to be got for dinner, after all? Tea without milk, bread without butter, and salted beef without vegetables. A poor meal certainly to set before an epicurean, such as Mr. Sutherland had been, for of _herself_ she never thought.