This beautiful girl was Mary Kingman, whom we left in the boat with Eliot Buckstone. Though only twenty, she had taught the grammar school at Poppleton Mills, and the one at the Port. Her last service had been in the High School, and she had just resigned her situation there on account of family troubles. She had been a pupil in this school with Eugene Hungerford, where a strong friendship had grown up between them. It was not love--they were too young. On his return from college, where, to save expense, he had taken to the study of the law in the office of Squire Perkins at the Port, he saw her only occasionally. The future had been too uncertain to permit him to think of marriage; and though he still cherished his early regard for her, he prudently refrained from committing himself or her to any expression of the feeling which both evidently entertained. All this was changed now; he could give her a home, a palace; he could crown her with golden wreaths, and make her the queen of the county; but above all, he could redeem her from the wasting bondage to which her domestic relations subjected her. Thus thought Eugene Hungerford as he travelled homeward, and in spite of the vein of obstinacy in his nature, there was a fair prospect that the expectations of the deceased uncle would be realized. Mary Kingman was an angel of light in his future path, and he could not turn from the bright vision, even to become a martyr to his high sense of duty, and thus wrong himself out of the three millions. In due time the family got out of the cars at Poppleton Mills, through which the railroad from Boston passed, and took the stage, that made two trips a day from the Port. The marine village lay exactly two miles due south of the manufacturing village, across the space included in the lower half of the S formed by the winding of Bell River. The road was through a rocky, hilly region for the first mile, abounding in glens and steeps which were beautifully picturesque. One mile from the Port the great turnpike to the north-east, over which the mail between Boston and Portland had been carried before railroads were built, crossed the Mills road, forming an acute angle with it. In this angle was the cottage of James Hungerford.