blades; and in the distance, through the faint morning haze of
evaporating dew, the line of the woods, of a still darker green, meeting
the clear blue of the summer sky. Old Dinah saw, going down the path, a
tall, brown girl, in a homespun frock, swinging a slat-bonnet in one
hand and a splint basket in the other.

"Oh, Cicely!" she called.

The girl turned and answered in a resonant voice, vibrating with youth
and life,----

"Yes, granny!"

"Be sho' and pick a good mess er peas, chile, fer yo' gran'daddy's gwine
ter be home ter dinner ter-day."

The old woman stood a moment longer and then turned to go into the
house. What she had not seen was that the girl was not only young, but
lithe and shapely as a sculptor's model; that her bare feet seemed to
spurn the earth as they struck it; that though brown, she was not so
brown but that her cheek was darkly red with the blood of another race
than that which gave her her name and station in life; and the old woman
did not see that Cicely's face was as comely as her figure was superb,
and that her eyes were dreamy with vague yearnings.

Cicely climbed the low fence between the garden and the cornfield, and
started down one of the long rows leading directly away from the house.
Old Needham was a good ploughman, and straight as an arrow ran the
furrow between the rows of corn, until it vanished in the distant
perspective. The peas were planted beside alternate hills of corn, the
cornstalks serving as supports for the climbing pea-vines. The vines
nearest the house had been picked more or less clear of the long green
pods, and Cicely walked down the row for a quarter of a mile, to where
the peas were more plentiful. And as she walked she thought of her dream
of the night before.

She had dreamed a beautiful dream. The fact that it was a beautiful
dream, a delightful dream, her memory retained very vividly. She was
troubled because she could not remember just what her dream had been
about. Of one other fact she was certain, that in her dream she had
found something, and that her happiness had been bound up with the thing
she had found. As she walked down the corn-row she ran over in her mind
the various things with which she had always associated happiness. Had
she found a gold ring? No, it was not a gold ring--of that she felt
sure. Was it a soft, curly plume for her hat? She had seen town people
with them, and had indulged in day-dreams on the subject; but it was not