“Thank you, sir,” said Leonora. “You are one of Mrs. Ridgway’s young ladies, I presume,” said Henry. “Yes, I shall not be back in time for my music-lesson, if I do not hurry.” “There is a blacksmith not a quarter of a mile from here. My advice to you is to stop and have this shoe refitted. Remember, you have a mile of a newly macadamized road to travel before you get home, and over that you will have to walk your horse slowly unless you restore him his shoe.” Leonora seemed struck by these considerations. “I will take your advice,” she said, putting herself in the saddle with a movement so quick and easy that Berwick could not interpose to help her. But the horse limped so badly that she once more dismounted. “Let me lead him for you,” said Berwick, “I shall not have to go a step out of my way.” “You are very obliging,” replied the lady. And the young man led the horse, while the young lady walked by his side. The quarter of a mile was a remarkably long one. It was a full hour before the blacksmith’s shed was reached, and then Berwick, secretly giving the man of the anvil a dollar, winked at him, and said aloud, “Call us as soon as you have fitted the shoe”; and then added, in an _aside_, “Be an hour or so about it.” The new acquaintances strolled together to a beautiful pond within sight among the hills. O that exquisite June morning, with its fresh foliage, its clear sky, its pine odors, its wild-flowers, and its songs of birds! How imperishable in the memories of both it became! How much happier were they ever afterwards for the happiness of that swift-gliding moment! Leonora spied some harebells in the crevices of the slaty rocks of a steep declivity, and pointed them out as the first of the season. “I must get them for you,” cried Berwick. “No, no! It is a dangerous place,” said Leonora. “They shall be your harebells,” said Berwick, swinging himself, by the aid of a birch-tree that grew almost horizontally out of the cleft of a rock, over the precipice, and snatching the flowers. Leonora treasured them for years, pressed between the leaves of Shelley’s Poems. Thus began a courtship which, three weeks afterwards, was followed by an offer of marriage. Early in the acquaintance, foreseeing the drift of Berwick’s eager attentions, Leonora had frankly communicated by letter her suspicions in regard to her own birth.