day; and the
warblers are getting uneasy and will be gone soon. I haven't seen a
squirrel lately. Josiah used to say that meant an early winter."

"Oh, but the asters! What colour! And the golden-rod! Look at it close,
Leila. Each little flower is a star of gold."

"How pretty!" She bent down over the flowers to pay the homage of honest
pleasure. "How you always see, John, so easily, the pretty little wild
beauties of the woods; I never could." She was "making up" as children
say.

"Oh, you were the schoolmaster once," he laughed. "Come, we have enough;
now for the garden."

They passed through the paling fence and along the disordered beds, where
a night of too early frost had touched with chill fingers of disaster the
latest buds. Leila moved about looking at the garden, fingering a bud
here and there with gentle epitaphs of "late," "too late," or gathering
the more matronly roses which had bloomed in time. John watched her bend
over them, and then where there were none but frost-wilted buds stand
still and fondle with tender touch the withered maidens of the garden.

He came to her side, "Well, Leila, I'll swap thoughts with you."

She looked up, "Your's first then."

"I was thinking it must be hard to die before you came to be a rose--like
some other more human things."

"Is that a charade, John? You will be writing poems about the lament of
the belated virgin roses that had not gathered more timely sunshine and
were alas! too late."

He looked at her with a smile of pleased surprise. "Thanks, cousin; it is
you who should be the laureate of the garden. Shelley would envy you."

"Indeed! I am flattered, sir, but I have not read any of Shelley as yet.
You have, I suppose? He is supposed to be very wicked. Get me some more
golden-rod, John." He went back to the edge of the wood and came again
laden, rejoining her at the porch.

For two days her aunt kept her busy. Early in the week she went away to
be met in Philadelphia by her Uncle Charles, and to be returned to her
Maryland school.

A day or two later John too left to undergo the dreaded examination at
West Point. The two older people were left alone at Grey Pine with the
rector, who had returned from his annual holiday later than usual. Always
depressed at these seasons, he was now indisposed for the society of even
the two people who were his most valued friends. He dined with them the
day John went away and took up the many duties of his clerical li