could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The
Mountain,--the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It
showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the
region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its
wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well as by day.
As the teacher read on, her color changed, and a kind of tremulous
agitation came over her. There were hints in this strange paper she did
not know what to make of. There was something in its descriptions and
imagery that recalled,--Miss Darley could not say what,--but it made her
frightfully nervous. Still she could not help reading, till she came to
one passage which so agitated her, that the tired and over-wearied girl's
self-control left her entirely. She sobbed once or twice, then laughed
convulsively; and flung herself on the bed, where she worked out a set
hysteric spasm as she best might, without anybody to rub her hands and
see that she did not hurt herself.

By and by she got quiet, rose and went to her bookcase, took down a
volume of Coleridge, and read a short time, and so to bed, to sleep and
wake from time to time with a sudden start out of uneasy dreams.

Perhaps it is of no great consequence what it was in the composition
which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a state
that almost any slight agitation would have brought on the attack, and it
was the accident of her transient excitability, very probably, which made
a trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. The theme
was signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, E. Venner, and
was, of course, written by that wild-looking girl who had excited the
master's curiosity and prompted his question, as before mentioned. The
next morning the lady-teacher looked pale and wearied, naturally enough,
but she was in her place at the usual hour, and Master Langdon in his