With a beating heart and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang into the path before her.

Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a faint scream.
"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me." A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the astonished girl.

That familiar voice--that knowledge of her name--that tall and well-remembered form! She leaned eagerly forward, and looked into the stranger's face.

A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across its dark features of manly beauty.
"Richard Martin! can it be possible!" "Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world, in that love which neither sea nor land can abate.

For many weary months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors among my own people.