than a match for Miss Darry,
and sent me exhausted to bed. Miss Darry appeared the next morning, and
if the whole breezy atmosphere of Hillside had clung to her garments,
she could not have had a more bracing effect. How bright, loving, and
gentle she was, when she found me really ill! To be sure, she prescribed
vigorous tonics, as was in accordance with her style; in fact, she was
one herself; but she relieved my weak and languid dejection by brilliant
talk, when I could bear it,--by tender words of hope, when I could not.
My late internal censures upon her, as a hard task-mistress, were now
the ghosts of self-reproach, which a morbid condition conjured about my
pillow; and the vision of her healthy, self-restrained nature presided
over every dream, recalling most derisively Mr. Leopold's simile of the
pine- and peach-trees.

I left my bed, from very shame at prostration, long before I was able,
and returned with her to Hillside, whither Mrs. and Mr. Lang invited me
for the rest which she now considered necessary. Mr. Leopold had left
Warren, and retaken a studio in town for the fall and winter; but many a
memory of his kind deeds and pleasant manners lingered in the place.
Every village must have its hero, its great man of past or present,
looking down, like Hawthorne's great stone face, in supreme benignity
upon it. Mr. Leopold had been the first occupant of this royal chair in
Warren; for the enthusiasm which seeks a better than itself had just
been called forth by the teaching and influence of Hillside.

One morning, when Miss Darry was occupied with her scholars, I wandered
through the village and to the Brays' cottage to make my first call.
Mrs. Bray was busy making cake. Annie, so tall and slender, that, as she
stood with her face turned from me, I wondered what graceful young lady
they had there, was prepared for her walk to Hillside, her books in a
little satchel on her arm. Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of my
thin, pale face, though her own was fragile as a snow-drop; but she at
once apologized for and explained her sorrow by calling me her "dear old
brother Sandy." I proposed one of our old-time strolls together up the
hill, and we soon started in company. Half way up, at the meadow, where
we had arranged and painted our first picture, I yielded to the impulse,
which heretofore I had resisted, to sit again on the old stump and
recall the scene. I was really weary, for this was my first long walk,