e feathery foliage
of the white birch swayed gently back and forth; the peonies lifted their
crimson heads airily; the snowball bush bent under the weight of its white
blooms till it swept the grass; the fountain splashed softly.

"'By cool Siloam's shady rill
How fair the lily grows,'"

Rosalind chanted dreamily.

Grandmamma had given her the hymn book, telling her to choose a hymn and
commit it to memory, and as she turned the pages this had caught her eye
and pleased her fancy.

"It sounds like the Forest of Arden," she said, leaning back on the garden
bench and shutting her eyes.

"'How sweet the breath beneath the hill
Of Sharon's lovely rose.'"

She swung her foot in time to the rhythm. She was not sure whether a rill
was a fountain or a stream, so she decided, as there was no dictionary
convenient, to think of it as like the creek where it crossed the road at
the foot of Red Hill.

Again she looked at the book; skipping a stanza, she read:--

"'By cool Siloam's shady rill
The lily must decay;
The rose that blooms beneath the hill
Must shortly pass away.'"

The melancholy of this was interesting; at the same time it reminded her
that she was lonely. After repeating, "Must shortly pass away," her eyes
unexpectedly filled with tears.

"Now I am not going to cry," she said sternly, and by way of carrying out
this resolve she again closed her eyes tight. It was desperately hard
work, and she could not have told whether two minutes or ten had passed
when she was startled by an odd, guttural voice close to her asking,
"What is the matter, little girl?"

If the voice was strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was
stranger still. A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling
gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with
eyes so bright they made her uneasy.

"Nothing," she answered, rising hastily.

But the visitor continued to stand there and smile at her, shaking his
head and repeating, "Mustn't cry."

"I am not crying," Rosalind insisted, glancing over her shoulder to make
sure of a way of escape.

With a long, thin finger this strange person now pointed toward the house,
saying something she understood to be an inquiry for Miss Herbert.

Miss Herbert was the housekeeper, and Rosalind knew she was at church; but
when she tried to explain, the old man shook his head, and taking from his
pocket a table