The Argosy — page 241: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

224 Among Untrodden Ways. determinedly. My sweet hostess thought of a device, however, which changed his whole demeanour, for he gave a sulky wag of his tail equal to the bow of a man in society who is introduced against his will. She put one of her soft bare arms about my neck, as a sister might have done to a brother, and, reaching up, approached her red lips to my cheek and kissed me, explaining that so she did to her father ; and Jacobin would know me for a friend. I began to feel that in spite of the unknown father, who was probably a conspirator, from his being in hiding, and from his having such a name for his dog, office-stool might see me no more. I began to be amused in thinking I should be advertised for, not by my relations, for I had none but the lawyer to whom my guardian had bound me. ‘That gentleman would not make frantic efforts to find me, however, as he himself would come into my little property in case of my death. Now we entered the cottage together. What a Robinson Crusoe place it was. ‘The number of ingenious contrivances told of the difficulty of bringing anything here from the towns. Nothing had been brought that by any ingenuity could be made on the spot. There was a fire of wood and turf, and a wood-pigeon was in process of cooking. Jacobin had brought it in, the girl explained ; and then she showed me a gun, almost sorrowfully, saying : ‘‘ Some- times I have to shoot, when there is nothing else; but I go on to the moor, for how can I shoot my friends in the valley? But,” she added, the little cloud leaving her expressive face, “there are many good herbs in the valley, and fruits too, and berries when the year falls, and one lives well here—very well.” I added something to the meal from my own little store of ‘ camp- ing-out ” material, and our repast was a very gay one. When the room was put to rights, Amie—for she told me she was so called—showed me her great treasure, her one book. It was a very old and worn edition of fairy tales, printed in French. When she had turned over the pages and pointed out her favourite stories, she said with innocent mirth : ‘¢ And my prince is come too, and will marry me.” I only smiled back at her in answer. The dreamy state in which the valley itself seemed to have thrown me, and the witchery of this exquisite child of nature, lulled me into a placid quiescence in which all that followed appeared natural. Amie placed her father’s room at my disposal when night came. I did not tell her I should not avail myself of it, but when she had fired me once more by her pure good-night kiss, and Jacobin had stretched his huge form across her doorway, I passed out into the cool air, and in a rapturous intoxica- tion, unknown even to the opium eater, I paced the yielding turf the whole night through, and watched the stars glint down through the tall tree-tops. The nightingales had now filled the orchestra, and GOnmilebooks (E@)