She waves her hand and turns away. Eric shrugs his shoulders slightly and follows. There is a moment or two of laughing dispute at the door of the coach, then she suffers herself to be elevated to the deck-seat, and he follows. “Please don’t blame me, Mrs. Markham!” she cries. “He _will_ go!” “Don’t drive the horses hard, John,” says Eric. “Take the day leisurely. We will stop at Alexander’s.” With this the coach drives off—Mrs. Cardigan’s blue veil fluttering like a pennon of victory in the breeze, while Eric holds an umbrella over her. We all laugh at the sight. It is something altogether novel to see Eric playing the part of cavalier. “What a _taking_ way some women—widows especially—have!” says Charley. “If Eric is not taken for good by the time he reaches Alexander’s, it will not be the lady’s fault.” The stage has been gone probably an hour when we start. Though it is not much later than nine o’clock, the heat is already sultry, and there are clouds on the mountains which betoken rain. We agree that there will probably be a storm later in the day, but we enjoy the sunshine while it lasts. At Mountain Island, Sylvia insists on halting; and we go out as far as possible on the ledge of rock over which the current pours in foaming rapids. Standing here, we look up at the island, which rises fifty or sixty feet above us— a bold hill in the midst of the raging stream. “I should like to go there,” says Sylvia wistfully. But, with the best intentions, neither of her attendants can devise any means of transporting her over the whirling fall which intervenes between our standpoint and the island. “If one had a boat, one could cross at the lower end and mount to the headland,” says Mr. Lanier. This suggestion is not of much value, however, since we have no boat, so we are forced to content ourselves with gazing. The sides of the hill are covered with a growth of ferns, which literally carpet it, but the trees have been burned, and now stand black and bare, disfiguring the beautiful picture. “What odious barbarian was guilty of that outrage?” asks Sylvia, in a tone of indignant scorn. “Some hunting barbarian, I believe,” answers Charley. “I have been told that the trees were burned because the deer, when hard pressed by the dogs, would swim the river and take refuge there.” “Oh, the wretches!” says Sylvia—which complimentary epithet is evidently not meant to apply either to the deer or the dogs. Presently John appears on the bank, charged with a message: “Mistis say you better come on, Mass Charley—she wants to git over Laurel ’fore the rain comes up.” “A fig for the rain!” says Charley—but we turn reluctantly from the stormy rapids, the towering island, the whole wild, lovely scene, and continue our journey. The rain does not come up before we reach Laurel, and that river is found to be in a very satisfactory state. Aunt Markham stops at Wash’s cabin and makes solicitous inquiries.