ere singing; finally a greyhound came down the path,
and put its nose into the hollow of her hand.

She rose to her knees, and curled her arm around the dog's neck; then,
with a long sigh, stood up, and asked of herself if this were the way to
the house. She had never seen the house at close range, had never been in
this walled garden. It was from Williamsburgh that the minister had taken
her to his home, eleven years before. Sometimes from the river, in those
years, she had seen, rising above the trees, the steep roof and the upper
windows; sometimes upon the creek she had gone past the garden wall, and
had smelled the flowers upon the other side.

In her lonely life, with the beauty of the earth about her to teach her
that there might be greater beauty that she yet might see with a daily
round of toil and sharp words to push her to that escape which lay in a
world of dreams, she had entered that world, and thrived therein. It was a
world that was as pure as a pearl, and more fantastic than an Arabian
tale. She knew that when she died she could take nothing out of life with
her to heaven. But with this other world it was different, and all that
she had or dreamed of that was fair she carried through its portals. This
house was there. Long closed, walled in, guarded by tall trees, seen at
far intervals and from a distance, as through a glass darkly, it had
become to her an enchanted spot, about which played her quick fancy, but
where her feet might never stray.

But now the spell which had held the place in slumber was snapped, and her
feet was set in its pleasant paths. She moved down the alley between the
lines of box, and the greyhound went with her. The branches of a
walnut-tree drooped heavily across the way; when she had passed them she
saw the house, square, dull red, bathed in sunshine. A moment, and the
walk led her between squat pillars of living green into the garden out of
the fairy tale.

Dim, fragrant, and old time; walled in; here sunshiny spaces, there cool
shadows of fruit-trees; broken by circles and squares of box; green with
the grass and the leaves, red and purple and gold and white with the
flowers; with birds singing, with the great silver river murmuring by
without the wall at the foot of the terrace, with the voice of a man who
sat beneath a cherry-tree reading aloud to himself,--such was the garden
that she came upon, a young girl, and heavy at heart.

She was so near that she could hear th