aid. And then I was in Hugon's
house, holding the door,--there was a wolf without,--and through the
window I saw the mountains; only they were so high that my heart ached to
look upon them, and the wind cried down the cleft in the hills. The wolf
went away, and then, somehow, I was upon the hilltop.... There was a dead
man lying in the grass, but it was too dark to see. Hugon came up behind
me, stooped, and lifted the hand.... Upon the finger was that ring you
wear, burning in the moonlight.... Oh me!"

The remembered horror of her dream contending with present bliss shook her
spirit to its centre. She shuddered violently, then burst into a passion
of tears.

Haward's touch upon her hair, Haward's voice in her ear, all the old terms
of endearment for a frightened child,--"little maid," "little coward,"
"Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt thee!" She
controlled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping. It was sweet to
sit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed from the world by the
willow's drooping green, and in that soft and happy light to listen to his
voice, half laughing, half chiding, wholly tender and caressing. Dreams
were naught, he said. Had Hugon troubled her waking hours?

He had come once to the house, it appeared; but she had run away and
hidden in the wood, and the minister had told him she was gone to the
Widow Constance's. That was a long time ago; it must have been the day
after she and Mistress Deborah had last come from Fair View.

"A long time," said Haward. "It was a week ago. Has it seemed a long time,
Audrey?"

"Yes,--oh yes!"

"I have been busy. I must learn to be a planter, you know. But I have
thought of you, little maid."

Audrey was glad of that, but there was yet a weight upon her heart. "After
that dream I lay awake all night, and it came to me how wrongly I had
done. Hugon is a wicked man,--an Indian. Oh, I should never have told you,
that first day in the garden, that he was waiting for me outside! For now,
because you took care of me and would not let him come near, he hates you.
He is so wicked that he might do you a harm." Her eyes widened, and the
hand that touched his was cold and trembling. "If ever hurt came to you
through me, I would drown myself in the river yonder. And then I
thought--lying awake last night--that perhaps I had been troublesome to
you, those days at Fair View, and that was why you had not come to see the
minister, as yo