r
the influence of the children's sympathetic expectancy, the Perdu began
to find fuller expression. Every mysterious element in the
neighborhood--whether emanating from the Perdu itself or from the
spirits of the people about it--appeared to find a focus in the
personalities of the two children. All the weird, formless
stories,--rather suggestions or impressions than stories,--that in the
course of time had gathered about the place, were revived with added
vividness and awe. New ones, too, sprang into existence all over the
country-side, and were certain to be connected, soon after their origin,
with the name of Reuben Waugh. To be sure, when all was said and sifted,
there remained little that one could grasp or set down in black and
white for question. Every experience, every manifestation, when
investigated, seemed to resolve itself into something of an epidemic
sense of unseen but thrilling influences.

The only effect of all this, however, was to invest Reuben with an
interest and importance that consorted curiously with his youth. With a
certain consciousness of superiority, born of his taste for
out-of-the-way reading, and dreaming, and introspection, the boy
accepted the subtle tribute easily, and was little affected by it. He
had the rare fortune not to differ in essentials from his neighbors, but
only to intensify and give visible expression to the characteristics
latent in them all.

Thus year followed year noiselessly, till Reuben was seventeen and Celia
fifteen. For all the expectancy, the sense of eventfulness even, of
these years, little had really happened save the common inexplicable
happenings of life and growth. The little that might be counted an
exception may be told in a few words.

The customs of angling for catfish and tapping the birch trees for sap,
had been suffered to fall into disuse. Rather, it seemed interesting to
wander vaguely together, or in the long grass to read together from the
books which Reuben would borrow from the cobwebby library of the old
schoolmaster.

As the girl reached up mentally, or perhaps, rather, emotionally, toward
the imaginative stature of her companion, her hold upon him
strengthened. Of old, his perceptions had been keenest when alone, but
now they were in every way quickened by her presence. And now it
happened that the great blue heron came more frequently to visit the
Perdu. While the children were sitting amid the birches, they heard the
_hush! hush!_