While looking at one of the homely shelves in a corner of the deserted house, Mary accidentally espied a small volume of poems, the gift of Glenn, that had been neglected. She seized it eagerly, and after turning over the pages the fiftieth time, and humming over many of the songs, she paused suddenly, and lifting her eyes to the bright sun-beams that streamed through the window, long remained in a listless attitude. Something unusual had startled her simple meditations. At first a shade of painful concern seemed to pass across her brow, and then glancing quickly at the book she still held in her hand, a sweet smile animated her lips. But again and again, ever and anon, the abstracted gaze was repeated, and as often succeeded by the smile when her eyes fell upon the volume. Did her thoughts dwell upon the giver of that book? Undoubtedly. Did she love Glenn? This she knew not herself, but she would have died for him! She was ignorant of the terms courtship, love, and marriage. But nature had given her a heart abounding with noble and generous impulses. At length she drew her shawl closely round her shoulders, and, closing the door of the hut, was in the act of returning up the hill, when she was startled by the furious and sudden barking of the hounds, which she had left confined in the inclosure on the cliff. She paused, and looked steadily in every direction, and was not able to discover, or even conjecture, what it was that had roused the hounds. Yet an undefinable fear seized upon her. The fawn at her side likewise partook of the agitation, for the hair stood upright on its back, and it often snuffed the air with great violence, producing, at each time, a shrill, unnatural sound. Mary started briskly up the path, determined to shut herself up in Glenn’s house until her father returned from the island. When she had proceeded about twenty paces, and was just passing a dense thicket of hazel that bordered the narrow path, she heard a slight rustling on the left, and the next moment she was clasped in the arms of a brawny savage!