Frank Vanderlyn and those who had been farthest behind with him came up at that moment; and Horace Townsend, if no one else, detected the sullen frown that gathered on his brow as he saw his sister lying in the arms of the man whom he had so grossly insulted. But if he frowned he said nothing, very prudently; for it is indeed not sure that it would have been safe, just then, for an emperor, there present, to speak an ill word to the hero of the day. Be all this as it may, the usual authorial affidavit may be taken that Halstead Rowan retained Clara Vanderlyn, brother or no brother in the way, in his arms until some one succeeded in obtaining water from a clear deposit of rain among the rocks; that no one--not even one of the ladies--attempted to dispossess him of his newly-acquired human territory; that when the water had been brought, and she first gave token of the full return of consciousness, she did so by clasping her arms around Rowan's neck (of course involuntarily) and murmuring words that sounded to Townsend and some others near, like: "You saved me! How good and noble you are!" and that even under that temptation he did not kiss her, as he would probably have sacrificed both arms and a leg or two, but not his manliness, to do. It was a quarter of an hour after, when Miss Vanderlyn, sufficiently and only sufficiently recovered to ride, was placed once more in the saddle and the cavalcade took its way more slowly down the mountains. The scenery, under the western sun, was even more lovely than that of the morning, the mists had all rolled away from every point of the compass, and there were some views Franconia-wards that they had entirely missed in the ascent. But there was scarcely one of the company who had not been so stirred to the very depths of human sympathy, by the event of the preceding half-hour, that inanimate nature, however wondrously beautiful, was half forgotten. So quickly, in those summer meetings and partings, do we grow attached to those with whom we are temporarily associated, especially amid the surroundings of the sublime and beautiful,--that had that fair girl lost her life so strangely and sadly, not one of all who saw the accident but would have borne in mind through life, in addition to the inevitable horror of the recollection, a memory like that of losing a dear and valued friend. And yet many of them had never even spoken to her, and perhaps only one in the whole cavalcade (her brother) had known of her existence one week before!