If there was no dream of the future in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.
The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the brief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himself at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable woods--satisfied her feeble cravings.

She no longer regretted the inferior position that her fears had obliged her to take the first night she came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger than herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found that this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that she discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this seductive eminence.
A week had elapsed with little change.

On two days he had been absent all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which, thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now considered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire.

On the first of these occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying but little heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and retiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own distant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regained courage, she no longer required so near.

On the second occasion, he found her writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears.