young wanderers, but they could not light up their pathway or point
their homeward track. The only sounds, save the lulling murmur of the
rippling stream below, were the plaintive note of the whip-poor-will,
from a gnarled oak that grew near them, and the harsh grating scream
of the night hawk, darting about in the higher regions of the air,
pursuing its noisy congeners, or swooping down with that peculiar
hollow rushing sound, as of a person blowing into some empty vessel,
when it seizes with wide-extended bill its insect prey.

Hector was the first to break the silence. "Cousin Louis, we were
wrong in following the course of the stream; I fear we shall never
find our way back tonight."

Louis made no reply; his sad and subdued air failed not to attract the
attention of his cousins.

"Why, Louis, how is this? you are not used to be cast down by
difficulties," said Hector, as he marked something like tears
glistening in the dark eyes of his cousin.

Louis's heart was full; he did not reply, but cast a troubled glance
upon the weary Catharine, who leaned heavily against the tree beneath
which she sat.

"It is not," resumed Hector, "that I mind passing a summer's night
under such a sky as this, and with such a dry grassy bed below me; but
I do not think it is good for Catharine to sleep on the bare ground in
the night dews,--and then they will be so anxious at home about our
absence."