The lawyer, as has been said, rode behind; and, as has _not_ been said, he did so in no enviable state of feeling. He had done nothing--been accused of nothing--in any manner calculated to degrade him; but one casual event had thrown a shadow across his path, not easily recognized without some recollection of characteristics before developed. The reader has had abundant reason to believe that this man, profiting by some intelligence obtained in a manner not open to the outer world, of the peculiar madness of Margaret Hayley after that abstraction, courage,--had more or less firmly determined to win her through the exhibition of certain qualities which he believed that he possessed in a peculiar degree. One opportunity had been given him (that at the Pool), and he had succeeded in interesting her to an extent not a little flattering and hopeful; but envious fate could not allow a week to pass without throwing him again into disadvantageous comparison with a man who had no occasion whatever of making any exhibition of such qualities! That Margaret Hayley would yet remain for some days and perhaps weeks in the mountains, and that she would probably visit the Crawford before her departure, he had at least every reason to believe; and he had quite as much cause for confidence that the story of the adventure over the Gulf of Mexico, roundly exaggerated to place himself in a false position and to deify the Illinoisan, would reach her ears, whether at the Profile or the Crawford, through stage-drivers or migratory passengers, within the next forty-eight hours. This (for reasons partially hinted at and others which will develop themselves in due time) was precisely that state of affairs which he would have given more to avoid than any other that could have been named; and this it was that made a dark red flush of mortification rise at times to his dusky cheek and give an expression any thing but pleasant to his eyes, as he rode silently behind the two who were now so indubitably linked as lovers, once more over the top of Prospect and down the rugged declivities of Clinton. Those who have ever been placed in circumstances approaching to these in character, can best decide whether the lawyer was sulking for nothing or indulging in gloomy anticipations with quite sufficient reason.