the Delphian
oracle; and then he cantered away.

For the first time since her father's death, Georgiella sang that
afternoon as she walked about the garden teasing her plants to bloom.

* * * * *

It was Monday, the fifteenth of December. Mrs. McCorkle ushered
Ellesworth upstairs into his own room in the cottage mortgaged in his
own name. The sun poured into it like a living blessing. The rose-bush
enveloped the windows, and when the sash was raised, delicate tendrils
insinuated themselves within, as if, in Southern fashion, they would
"shake howdy." The room was dainty and home-like. It flashed across
Ellesworth as he sank into the cushioned rocking-chair with a long
breath of content, that it might have been Georgiella's. It was in the
dreamy part of the day. The sun was dipping under the high branches of
the pines. Then the luxury of leaning out of the window in December! He
could not help but think of it as _his_ sun, and _his_ garden and _his_
trees. And now Georgiella came out, bareheaded, and swept the pine
needles and leaves from the narrow box-bordered path, and snipped dead
branches from the shrubs, and then before she went to feed the chickens
she cast up at him a shy glance that made his heart leap within him. He
did not leave his room until he was called to supper. His fancy was
feverish, and kept picturing his mortgaged girl in a Boston
drawing-room, thrilling all the people he knew with her beauty. He
called it carmine beauty; but he was young and ardent.

He felt it when he first saw her, but that eventful afternoon he
formulated it and repeated it over and over again until he became
dizzy--"I love her! I love her!" And then visions of work and strength
and success, and ambitions that had been stifled, began to spring within
him like blades from watered bulbs. The electric shock had come. He knew
it. He meant to spring to it like a man.

Dreamily he dressed for supper, and dreamily descended. Mrs. McCorkle
greeted him with her fine, thin manner. The young man looked about him
curiously. Aunt Betsey waited on the table. He tried not to think of her
hospitality in the matter of snuff. The room was worn and bare and
gray; so bereft of all but the most necessary furniture that its few
ornaments had a startling conspicuousness. He noticed a fat Chinese vase
set up like an idol in an old escritoire. Over the mantel was a
glass-case religiously protecting some coins and anci