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At sight of the young girl, one of the half dozen tall
stag-hounds rose from the grass, where he had been lying
with outstretched forelegs, and thoughtful eyes, and hastened—
if the word may be applied to movement so dignified
as his—toward her.

Sally Myers was not quite seventeen, but she was the
acknowledged beauty of the valley. Her pretty, round
face, was lit up with a merry smile, and her arms, entirely
bare almost from the shoulder, were models of beauty.
The stranger was much struck with her—he who had
seen so much female excellence—and he felt well satisfied
that the character which belonged to this smiling face,
could not be other than excellent. He did Miss Sally
Myers no more than justice. It was not her face alone
that overcame the hearts of all the young men of the
neighborhood; for that matter, she was not so beautiful
as some; but when her warm constant heart, and never-ceasing
cheerfulness and vivacity, were thrown into the
balance, the merits of any other young lady of the country
side, were as nothing. So thought the mountain
youths, at least.

Sally came up in company with the deer hound and
courtesied to the stranger. He had risen on her approach,
and now made a low and courtly inclination laying his
hand in foreign fashion on his heart. Sally laughed at

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this, and plainly could not help it; the traveler too
seemed to feel that his ceremonious bow was a little out
of place. So, resolving like a sensible man to retrieve
his error, he approached the girl smilingly and shook her
cordially by the hand.

“You were laughing at me, I perceive,” said he, “and
you were right.”

“I couldn't help it,” the young girl replied, coloring,
“excuse me, sir!”

The traveler laughed.

“Ah!” he said, “I have been far, and seen strange
people, and I have come back not much improved, I am
afraid. But may I ask what song you were singing?”

“`Flowers of the Forest,' sir.”

The stranger threw a piercing glance upon the girl,
and then stroking the large hound, who had by this time
become acquainted, and submitted very quietly to his
caresses:

“Do you like that song?” he said.

“Yes, sir—very much.”

“For whom do you sing it?”

The girl blushed and laughed.

“For any one,” she said.

“Please sing it for me, then,” he replied with a smile,
and offering her his seat.

But Sally had become very nervous under the stranger's
fixed, and penetrating look, and she felt wholly unable
to command her voice. She therefore murmured
an inaudible excuse, and ran rather than walked by the
stranger, into the house, and to her chamber.

The stranger took his seat again with a smile, muttering,
“Oh yes! he must have seen her, and if he has seen
her—”

He was interrupted by the mountaineer, who had followed
his daughter with his eyes, and now turned to him
happy and proud.

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“There's the little witch,” he said, “you ought to
have heard her sing, sir.”

“I hope I shall yet have that pleasure.”

“You stay long in these parts, do you?”

“You know when you arrive—you know not when you
go.”

“Oh, you're at your proverb-sayings!”

“I mean that I may leave here in a few days, or stay
for years.”

“You! where are you bound, Doctor?”

“For Mrs. Courtlandt's—somewhere down the valley
here.”

“For where!” cried the mountaineer, starting and
turning full upon his guest.

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