inspired and uplifted by the consciousness of her existence. It
might properly be grateful for the fact of her birth; that she
had grown to woman's estate; and, above all, that, in common with
the sun, the lark, the morning-glory, and other beautiful things
of the early day, she was up and about her lovely, cheery,
heart-warming business.

The handful of chimneys and the smoke spirals rising here and
there among the trees on the river-bank belonged to what was
known as the Brier Neighborhood. There were only a few houses in
all, scattered along a side road leading from the river up to
Liberty Centre. There were no great signs of thrift or
prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only one near the water,
was neat and well cared for, and Nature had done her best to
conceal man's indolence, poverty, or neglect.

Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as
the fences. Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and
over all the stone walls, as well as on every heap of rocks by
the wayside, prickly blackberry vines ran and clambered and
clung, yielding fruit and thorns impartially to the neighborhood
children.

The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side
of the river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the
Edgewood side. As there was another of her name on Brigadier
Hill, the Edgewood minister called one of them the climbing Rose
and the other the brier Rose, or sometimes Rose of the river.
She was well named, the pinkish speck. She had not only some of
the sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the parallel might