"'I swow,' says I, 'I'd like to clinch that feller, whoever he may be, and not have Harnah nigh enough to interfere.' Then I rec'lected a Cap'n Harris, a British officer, that come down from Canady the summer before, hunting and fishing, and had stopped a week or more at Uncle 'Siah's, mostly for the sake of seeing Harnah, as I thought then, and do now. Ever since, when Harnah didn't know how else to plague Sam and me, she'd set up to talk about 'real gentlemen,' and 'folks that knowed manners,' and all sech stuff. Then she'd pretend she'd got a letter from Cap'n Harris, and that he was coming agin, and all that. So now I got it in my head that Cap'n Harris was coming, and that she meant he'd get the harebells. "'But I'll bet he won't, without a fight, anyway,' says I, clinching up my fist; and then I went to sleep quite comf'table. "Now, there wa'n't but one place, as I knew of, where harebells was to be found; and Harnah had showed me that place herself the summer afore, and I had picked the flowers for her. So I made up my mind to go next day and see if they was in blow; and, if they was, to get a bunch anyway, and take the resk of giving 'em to Harnah arterwards. "I couldn't git away in the morning nohow; for Hitty seemed to know it was something about Harnah that was calling me, and contrived all sorts of business to keep me to hum: but, after dinner, I jist took my hat, and cleared out afore she knowed it, and, by the time she missed me, was half a mile up the river. "'Twas a pooty day as ever you see; and as I rowed along, listening to the water running by the boat, and the wind rustling in the trees, I began to feel real sort of good, and didn't care half so much about Sam or the British cap'n as I did when I started. When I come to the landing at Uncle 'Siah's, I never stopped, though I looked with all my eyes for any signs of Harnah; but couldn't see no one but Sam going out to the cornfield, with a hoe on his shoulder. "'Good for you, Sam,' says I to myself. 'Hard work's dreadful wholesome for love-sickness.' So I rowed along as merry as a cricket, and pretty soon tied up my boat, and struck off into the woods. It was consid'able of a walk; and I strolled along easy till I came to the place whar the harebells growed, 'bout a mile and a half from the river. This was a high clift, covered with brush and trees on one side, and on the other falling sheer down to a little deep valley, with another clift rising opposite. These clifts joined each other at the two ends of the valley: so there was no getting into it anyway but down the faces of 'em, and that was as much as a man's neck was worth; but, fur's I know, no man had ever wanted to, nor ever tried to, till that day.