How easy it would have been to have kept the cabin, and then to have gone away entirely, than for her father to have allowed them to be compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement! The suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of their fortunes seemed to grow with the involuntary admission of Whiskey Dick that they were shared by others who were practical men.

She was fain to have recourse to the prospect again to banish these thoughts, and this opened her eyes to the fact that her companions had been missing from the trail ahead of her for some time.

She quickened her pace slightly to reach a projecting point of rock that gave her a more extended prospect.

But they had evidently disappeared.
She was neither alarmed nor annoyed.

She could easily overtake them soon, for they would miss her, and return or wait for her at the spring.
At the worst she would have no difficulty in retracing her steps home.
In her present mood, she could readily spare their company; indeed she was not sorry that no other being should interrupt that sympathy with the free woods which was beginning to possess her.
She was destined, however, to be disappointed.