It was a high September tide; the water was lapping against the wall, the sky was blue, the wind was fresh. It was not yet sunset; she suspected there were visitors in the house; a carriage had driven up to the stable, from which she turned away her head, and which she resolved not to recognize. Hastily following a path that led up to the little wooded eminence that skirted the shore, she concealed her inhospitable thoughts and was out of sight of the house. "I don't really know who they were," she said to herself, when she was safe in the thicket. "So many people have bay horses, and I did not see the coachman. And how could I waste this glorious afternoon in the house? They will amuse Aunt Harriet, and I could not be with mamma if I were entertaining them. I am quite right in making my escape." The little path was narrow and close; the thicket almost met above her head. It was very still in there; the wind could not get in, and only the sound of the waves, washing on the shore below, could. "Where, through groves deep and high, Sounds the far billow, Where early violets die Under the willow--" she sang in a low voice, as from a little child she had always sung, or thought, as she passed along this tangled path. To be sure, it had the disadvantage of being a low thicket of cedars, instead of a grove deep and high. And the far billow was a near wave, and a small one at that. But she had always had to translate her romance into the vernacular. She had grown up in tame, pastoral green ways, in a home outwardly and inwardly peaceful and unmarked; and her young enthusiasms had had to fit themselves to her surroundings, or she should have been discontented with them. A good deal of imagination helped her in this. She loved the scenes for their own sakes, and for the sake of all the romance with which they were interwoven. A sense of humor even did not interfere. She laughed at herself as she grew older; but she loved the places just as well, and went on calling them by their fictitious names.