ar--darling."

She touched her horse lightly with the willow, but promptly drew rein,
regarding Nicholas with her boyish eyes.

"Do you think it would make it any easier if we kissed?" she asked.

"Geriminy! I should say so!"

He caught her hands; she leaned over and he kissed her lips. She drew
back with the same frank laugh, but a flush burned his face and his
eyes were sparkling.

"More, Genia," he said, but she laughed and let the bridle fall.

"No--no--but it made me feel better. There, good-bye, dear, dear Nick
Burr, good-bye!"

Then she dashed past him, and a whirl of dust filled the solitary air.

He looked after her until she turned her horse into the Old Stage Road,
and the clatter of the hoofs was gone. When the stillness had fallen
again he went slowly on his way.

In the woods the pale bodies of the beeches seemed to melt into the
cloudy atmosphere. There was no wind among the trees, and the pervading
dampness had robbed the yellowed leaves of their silken rustle. They
fluttered softly, hanging limp from the drooping branches as if attached
by invisible threads. As he went on a deep bluish smoke issued from
among some far-off poplars where a farmer was burning brush in a
clearing. The smoke hung low above the undergrowth, assuming eccentric
outlines and varied tones of dusk. Presently the fires glimmered nearer,
and he saw the red tongues of the flames and heard the parched crackling
of consuming leaves. The figures of the workers were limned grotesquely
against the ruddy background with a startling and unreal absence of
detail. They looked like incarnate shadows--stalking between the dim
beeches and the blazing brush heaps. A few drops of rain fell suddenly,
and the fires began slowly to die away. At the foot of the crumbling
"worm" fence, skirting the edges of the wood, deep wind-drifts of
russet leaves stirred mournfully. Later they would be hauled away to
assist in the winter dressing of the fallows; now they beat helplessly
against the retarding rails like a vanquished army of invasion.

Nicholas left the wood and passed the field of broomsedge on his way to
the house. Beyond the barnyard he saw the long rows of pine staves that
had supported the shocks of peanuts, and from the direction of the field
he caught sight of his father, driven homeward by the threatening rain.

Sairy Jane, who was bringing a string of dried snaps from the outhouse,
called to him to hurry before the cloudburst. Sh