“I wish you had been with me, Leonora, instead of that little imp of a berry girl. It was just that sense of not being at home that made that mountain life, at last, so unbearable to me. Yet home without that seemed so flat and lifeless, down on a dead level, with not a street or garden but could be counted and measured. I thought if I could only have a hut on the mountain side, with a goat or a dog, or something to give life to it.” “With a little girl or an old woman to do the work,” said Effie. “And some of us to come and take tea with you every other afternoon,” said Kate, “out in front of the house, with that great view before us. Would it not be charming?” “Would you believe it! I talked with that child as if she had been my dearest friend, and I should be afraid to tell you how near I crept to her side that night, as we slept under the shelf of rock. What I should have done without her I do not know. I knew the next night, as you shall hear; for, do you believe, that creature, after all I had done for her--” “What had you done for her?” asked Kate. “Why, I had--well, I had treated her like a friend, besides giving her fourpence for carrying my bundle, and another for her share of the blackberries, though I never thought of it till this moment, I believe she had picked them all. In the morning, after waking rather cold and with a feeling as if I had been jolted all night on a rough road, though nothing could be more different from travelling than that still rock,--how still it was, and every thing else too in that early dawn, every thing gray and unsocial!--I tried to call out to break the silence; but the sound of my voice frightened me. Just then the sun began to stream over the tops of the trees, and a blue-jay pierced the air with a scream, as if from the heart of the wilderness, and yet as if he had a right there which I had not--as if he was at home while I was only thinking of it. There was a harsh warmth in that single note, as if the sunlight was to him what a good fire would have been to me, which I believe I needed sadly, for it was at that time in the autumn, when the nights are cold, though the days are so warm. I said that the sense of not being at home was at last unbearable; I had not come to that point yet, and I resolved, come what might, that I would stay on the mountain till I should feel as much at home as the blue-jay, for I felt how really splendid such a life was, even though I had had no breakfast; for I forgot to say that, seeing a house at a distance, down the mountain, and having a little money left, after what I had given the day before to that ungrateful girl, I gave it all to her, to go down and buy something for us to eat. Just this once, I thought, and then we will live like the birds and the squirrels. Yes, said I to the distant house, as if it were the civilized world, I have now parted with the last link that binds me to thee, and repeated aloud,