em a bark as he
passed, and then pattered and pattered his tiny feet to catch up. The old
school house came in sight with its worn playground and dejected summer
air, and Marcia's eyes searched out the window where she used to sit to
eat her lunch in winters, and the tree under which she used to sit in
summers, and the path by which she and Mary Ann used to wander down to the
brook, or go in search of butternuts, even the old door knob that her hand
would probably never grasp again. She searched them all out and bade them
good-bye with her eyes. Then once she turned a little to see if she could
catch a glimpse of the old blackboard through the window where she and
Susanna Brown and Miller Thompson used to do arithmetic examples. The dust
of the coach, or the bees in the sunshine, or something in her eyes
blurred her vision. She could only see a long slant ray of a sunbeam
crossing the wall where she knew it must be. Then the road wound around
through a maple grove and the school was lost to view.

They passed the South meadow belonging to the Westons, and Hanford was
plowing. Marcia could see him stop to wipe the perspiration from his brow,
and her heart warmed even to this boy admirer now that she was going from
him forever.

Hanford had caught sight of the coach and he turned to watch it thinking
to see Kate sitting in the bride's place. He wondered if the bride would
notice him, and turned a deeper red under his heavy coat of tan.

And the bride did notice him. She smiled the sweetest smile the boy had
ever seen upon her face, the smile he had dreamed of as he thought of her,
at night standing under the stars all alone by his father's gate post
whittling the cross bar of the gate. For a moment he forgot that it was
the bridal party passing, forgot the stern-faced bridegroom, and saw only
Marcia--his girl love. His heart stood still, and a bright light of
response filled his eyes. He took off his wide straw hat and bowed her
reverence. He would have called to her, and tried three times, but his dry
throat gave forth no utterance, and when he looked again the coach was
passed and only the flutter of a white handkerchief came back to him and
told him the beginning of the truth.

Then the poor boy's face grew white, yes, white and stricken under the
tan, and he tottered to the roadside and sat down with his face in his
hands to try and comprehend what it might mean, while the old horse
dragged the plow whither he woul