In her admiration, Barbara had loosened her bridle, and the beautiful animal which she rode was cropping the sward with great zest, eagerly sweeping up grass and blossoms in one fragrant mouthful, as if he feared that her hand might the next instant curb him up from his sweet repast. Wahpee got down from his own horse, and cast him loose. Then he lifted Barbara from her saddle, and saying only, "Come here," led her along the margin of the brook, where she observed, with some surprise, that the grasses and ferns had been recently trodden into something like a path. The brook swept its crystal curves around one side of the clearing, which took the sun so warmly, then widened into a beautiful pool, margined with golden willows, growing wildly, under a sumptuous drapery of vines. Beyond this basin of water Barbara saw a column of blue smoke curling up from the foot of a great hemlock, and flashes of fire shot in and out through the quivering green of the undergrowth. Pleased and expectant, for Barbara began to surmise that she had not been brought to that lovely place by accident, she followed her guide in silence, and at last came out on a mound of grand circumference, covered so thickly with grass that her feet trod a hundred tiny flowers to death without her seeing them. The willows that margined the miniature lake at its base, and the hemlocks that crowded up from the forest, hedged in this pretty eminence, flickering its edges with tangled shadows and sunshine, but leaving a broad flat rock on the summit bathed in golden light. Around this rock, clusters of wild trumpet vines, trailing arbutus, and golden bitter-sweet, wove their beauties together in luxuriant wildness, creeping in rich traceries over the rock, or falling in garlands down the grassy sides of the mound. The centre of this rocky table was bright with sparkling crystals and clean as granite could be made. Something more than the hand of nature had been at work there. Not a dead leaf or broken twig could be found littering on the rock or in the grass. "Ah, how lovely!" exclaimed the lady, flinging back the hood of her mantle, and looking around in pleasant astonishment. "Surely, Wahpee, this is not your work?" "Would you be offended, lady, if it were mine?" said a voice close by, and from beneath the bending hemlocks came forth Philip, or Metacomet, the young man whose fate had been so strangely enwoven with her own. "Nay, Philip, I am neither offended nor surprised. It was kind to provide me this lovely spot to rest in, and I am glad to look once more on the face of a friend."