She was thinking it was bewitching, and drinking it in, when she felt two hands clasp her by the waist, and suddenly, swiftly, without a word of warning, she was swung off, clear to another rock about two yards distant, and there set down, “all standing.”  In bewildered astonishment, that only waited to become indignation, she turned to see whom she was to be angry with.  Nobody was near her but Winthrop, and he had disappeared behind the rock on which she had just been standing.  Elizabeth was not precisely in a mood for cool judgment; she stood like an offended brood-hen, with ruffled feathers, waiting to fly at the first likely offender.  The rest of the party began to draw near.

“Come Lizzie, we’re going home,” said her cousin.

“I am not,” said Elizabeth.

“Why?”

“Because I am not ready.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing —­ only I am not ready.”

“The sun’s out of Bright Spot now, Miss Haye,” said Rufus, with a somewhat mischievous play of feature.

Elizabeth was deaf.

“Winthrop has killed a rattlesnake!” exclaimed Asahel from the rock; —­ “Winthrop has killed a rattlesnake!”

And Winthrop came round the bushes bringing his trophy; a large snake that counted nine rattles.  They all pressed round, as near as they dared, to look and admire; all but Elizabeth, who stood on her rock and did not stir.

“Where was it? where was it?” —­

“When I first saw him, he was curled up on the rock very near to Miss Haye, but he slid down among the bushes before I could catch him.  We must take care when we come here now, for the mate must be somewhere.”

“I’ll never come here again,” said Miss Cadwallader.  “O come! —­ let us go!”

“Did you move me?” said Elizabeth, with the air of a judge putting a query.

Winthrop looked up, and answered yes.

“Why didn’t you ask me to move myself?”

“I would,” said Winthrop calmly, —­ “if I could have got word to the snake to keep quiet.”

Elizabeth did not know precisely what to say; her cousin was looking in astonishment, and she saw the corners of Rufus’s mouth twitching; she shut her lips resolutely and followed the party to the boat.

The talking and laughing was general among them on the way home, with all but her; she was thinking.  She even forgot her strawberries for little Winifred, which she meant to have given her in full view of her cousin.  She held her basket on her lap, and looked at the water and didn’t see the sunset.

The sun’s proper setting was not to be seen, for he went down far behind Wut-a-qut-o.  Wut-a-qut-o’s shade was all over the river and had mounted near to the top of the opposite hills; but from peak to peak of them the sunlight glittered still, and overhead the sun threw down broad remembrancers of where he was and where he had been.  The low hills in the distant north were all in sunlight; as the little boat pulled over the river they were lost behind the point of Shahweetah, and the last ray was gone from the last mountain ridge in view.  Cool shadows and lights were over the land, a flood of beauty overhead in the sky.