"We will leave you to rest in the carriage, Mrs. Farnham," he said, with off-hand politeness, as if studying that lady's comfort more than anything on earth. "We will see what wild flowers can be found among the rocks. Take care of yourself; that's right, Ralph, let the horses wet their mouths at this little brook--not too much though, it is a warm day. Now, Isabel, let's see which will climb this rock first--you, or little Mary and I." Isabel's eyes brightened through her tears. There was something in the cordial goodness of Judge Sharp that no grief could have resisted. "Please, sir," said Mary, struggling faintly in the arms of her noble friend--"please, sir, I can walk very well." "And I can carry you very well--why not? Come, now for a climb." And away strode the great-hearted man, holding her up that she might gaze on the scenery over his shoulder. Isabel followed close, helping herself up the steep rocks, now by catching hold of a spice-bush and shaking off all its ripe golden blossoms; now drawing down the loops of a grape-vine and swinging forward on it, encouraged in each new effort by the hearty commendations of her new friend. At last they reached the summit of a detached ridge of rocks that rose like a fortification back of the highway. Judge Sharp sat down upon a shelf cushioned like an easy-chair with the greenest moss and placed the children at his feet. A true lover of nature himself, he did not speak, or insist upon forcing exclamations of delight from the children who shared the glorious view with him. But he looked now and then into Mary Fuller's face, and was satisfied with all that he saw there. He turned and glanced also into the beautiful eyes of little Isabel. They were wandering dreamily from object to object, searching, as it were, along the misty horizon for some sign of her dead mother. It was her heart rather than her intellect that wandered over that magnificent scenery for something to dwell upon. "Are you sure, sir?" said Mary Fuller, timidly, looking up; "are you quite sure that this is the same world that Isabel and I were in yesterday?" "Why not? Doesn't it seem like the same?" "No," answered Mary, kindling up and looking eagerly around; "it is a thousand times larger, so vast, so grand, so--. Pray help me out, I wish to say so much and can't. Something chokes me here when I try to say how beautiful all this seems." Mary folded her hands over her bosom, and began to waver to and fro on the moss seat, struck with a pang of that exquisite pleasure which so closely approaches pain when we fully appreciate the beautiful. "You like this?" said the Judge, watching her face more than the landscape, that had been familiar to him when almost a wilderness. "I should like to stay here for ever. It seems as if every one that we have loved so much, is resting near the sky away off yonder falling close down upon the mountains."