readings of an unusually melancholy nature by young ladies, all of
which tended to make matters worse, so that when her turn came she felt
ready to cry. But she caught a look from Manson that was like wine. "He
has been brave," she thought; "I will be as much so"--and she was.

When the exercises were over the principal made a brief but feeling
address which raised him several degrees in Manson's estimation, and
that was the end. Most of the pupils lingered, loth to utter the last
farewells, but finally they were spoken, and with many moist eyes among
that gathering of young friends they separated. Some of them never met
in life again.

The few remaining evenings ere Liddy and her lover were to part were not
wasted by them, and the last Sunday was one long to be remembered.

"Come early," she had said the night before; "I have a little surprise
for you." When he arrived at her house that day, just as the distant
church bells were faintly calling, he found her dressed for a ride, and
was a little puzzled.

"I want you to take me to church to-day," she said, smiling, and then
added, in a low voice, "to our church on the top of Blue Hill, where
there will be no one but God and ourselves."

It was an odd thought, and yet, knowing her as he did, it was not
surprising. The simple reverence of it touched him, however.

"Now," she continued more cheerfully, "no more sober thoughts. Let us
try and be happy, and like children once more. Here is a basket I have
packed, and you are to put it in the carriage. We are to dine in the
woods."

The day was one of those rare ones that come only in June, and when they
reached the spot, now, henceforth and forever sacred to them, the
sheltering trees were fresh with new foliage, the birds singing while
building their nests, the summer breeze softly whispering in the
scattered hemlocks, and over all shone the mellow sunshine.

For a long time they sat on the rock, now hallowed by her tears, viewing
the beautiful landscape spreading out below and living over, as they had
many times before, and as young lovers will, all the little incidents of
their lives, and what a marvelous thing it was that they had come to
love each other. It was all a story as old as the rock upon which they
sat, and pure and sweet as the blue violets blooming at their feet. In
the midst of it Manson pointed to a spot in the valley below--a cedar
pasture with an immense boulder in the middle--and said: "Once upon