“O father! how little you understand me,” exclaimed Martha with a look of reproach. “I may seem a flirt, a coquette, but I’m not. My heart is not like your sign-board, and I have suffered more than you imagine from not being able to decide between Harry and Elisha, who love me so truly, and each of whom is so worthy of my love.” Then, pressing her hands to her bosom: “Poor heart!” she cried, “what must I do? Oh! tell me, what must I do?” Then, hastening into the sitting-room, where she kept the nosegay and the magnolia, she put her lips to Elisha’s withered love-gift, then carried it off, leaving the magnolia alone in its glory. But ere Martha reached the window, where she meant to fling the flowers away, the glass which held them slipped from her quivering hand, and in an instant it lay shattered at her feet.
“Well, really, child, you do astonish me,” said her father the afternoon of the day when Harry Valentine was expected. “You can’t sleep, you’ve lost your appetite, and all because ‘Lisha’s posy dropped on the floor. Why, what nonsense!”
“Well, yes, it is silly,” said Martha. “One of the two I will wed, and I have made up my mind it is to be Harry, and I doubt not Elisha will live fifty years and be happy too. Any one might let a glass break.”
“Ay, ay. I’ve smashed scores of ’em, child, and never knew any ill to follow—except once, when I stumbled and fell on top of the broken bits and cut my finger.”
Martha now made a strong effort to dispel the sense of approaching evil which for three days had been haunting her, and during the next hour she kept in good spirits. She had on her best gown, there was a flush upon her cheeks, and every few minutes she would go to the foot of the cherry-tree and ask if Harry Valentine were in sight.
“No, miss,” answered Popgun the last time she put the question to him. “But there is a man in the cedars yonder making signs; I guess he wants to speak with you or master. He looks like an Indian.”
Martha did not hesitate to go herself and see what the stranger wanted; and after the latter had spoken a few words to her and she turned to leave him, the bright color had fled from her face and she trembled.
A half-hour later a cavalcade of gay horsemen arrived at the tavern, and, as we may imagine, Van Alstyne wondered very much why his daughter was not present to greet Harry Valentine. He searched all through the house for Martha; he called her name, but she did not answer. Where could Martha be?
In the meanwhile Harry, directed by Popgun’s finger, which pointed to the woods, had set out in quest of his love.
And Martha was soon found; but not, as the young officer had fancied she would be, gathering chestnuts or wild grapes by the brookside, by Rattlesnake Brook, where he had first met her five years ago—oh! never-to-be-forgotten day, when she was just emerging from girlhood and the first down was on his chin. But now Harry found her kneeling upon a mossy rock, praying. And when at the sound of footsteps Martha rose up and flew into his arms, although transported with delight to meet her again, and to feel she had yielded him her heart at last—that heart which it had taken so long to win—nevertheless a pang shot through him when he discovered a tear on her cheek; ’twas easy to kiss the tear away, but why had she been weeping? He asked the question, but Martha only shook her head and said: