"I was thinking," he continued, in reply to her glance, "that this
mountain must be a wild and lonely place for one like you to spend your
life in."

"Yes, it is lonely," the young girl responded, with a wistful gleam in her
violent eyes.

"Have you lived here long, Miss Abbot?"

"Five years--a little more."

"So long? Surely you cannot have had much congenial society," Mr. Heath
remarked, as he contemplated with no favoring eye the rude hamlet far
below them on their right.

"None, save my father."

"And have you never been lonely, and yearned for youthful companionship?"

"Oh, yes, often," and the bright tears sprang quickly into Virgie's blue
eyes, as she thought of the nights she had wept herself to sleep from
sheer homesickness and a feeling of utter desolation. "But," she continued
more brightly, and winking rapidly to keep the tell-tale drops from
falling. "I can bear loneliness, or almost anything else, for my father's
sake."

"Poor child! brave little woman!" thought the man by her side, "it must
have been very much like being buried alive, and she has borne it like a
heroine; but she will not have to endure it much longer 'for her father.'