I discovered all these before I
received your letters. Otherwise, do you think I would have discovered
them at all?"
Thus preached this adorable little high-priest of heroic self-denial,
and when she had made an end she burst into tears, and wished that
Allan were there to wipe them away.
CHAPTER XVII.
A PICNIC IV THE WOODS.
Winter had passed, and in hot haste--literal hot haste--the time of
the singing of birds had come. It was early in the season when the
Macleods returned to their summer home, but "lily-footed spring" was
there before them. Earth, air, and sky were bathed in a glory of
sunlight, which strove to penetrate the dark labyrinth of the pines
through which the wind sang. The bay was embowered in gleaming
foliage. In its clear waters the Indians plunged or paddled, or lay in
attitudes picturesquely inert upon its shores. Above it in graceful
curves the unwearying gulls were sinking, rising, and wheeling aloft.
On one of these halcyon days of early summer Rose Macleod was
re-reading a letter from her friend Helene; which, though a mere
elegant scrawl in the first place, and now yellow and worn with age,
has been with some difficulty deciphered by the writers of this
veracious history.
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