ere this same girl will find it, in her desk at school.

On two occasions during the last summer at the district school,
he--quite a big boy now--joins the older boys and girls under a large
apple tree that grows near the schoolhouse, and plays a silly game, the
principal feature of which consists in his having to choose some girl to
kiss. As he knows very well whom he prefers, and has the courage to kiss
her when his turn comes, that seems a most delightful game; and although
he and other boys who were guilty of this proceeding are jeered at by
the younger ones, the experience makes such an impression on him that he
lies awake half the first night thinking about it.

But all too soon to him comes the end of schooldays and especially the
charming companionship of this particular fair-haired girl. On the last
day she asks him to write in her album, and he again indulges in rhyme
and inscribes therein a melancholy verse, the tenor of which is a hope
that she will see that his grave is kept green, as such an unhappy duty
must, in the near future, devolve upon some one. She in turn writes him
a farewell note of similar tone, and encloses a lock of her hair tied
with a blue ribbon. He has planned to walk home with her when the last
day ends, and perhaps participate in a more tender leave-taking, but she
rides home with her parents, and so that sweet scheme is foiled. With a
heavy heart he watches her out of sight and then, feeling that possibly
he may never see her again, takes his books and turns away from the dear
old brown schoolhouse for the last time. He locks the curl of hair and
her note up in a tin box where he keeps his fish-hooks, and resumes his
unending round of hard work and chores. His horizon has enlarged a good
deal, for he is now twelve years old--but it does not yet include Liddy.

It is over a year before he sees her again, though once, when given a
rainy half-day to fish in Ragged Brook, he, like a silly boy, deserts
that enticing stream for an hour and cuts across lots near her home in
hopes that he may see her again, but fails.

Then one summer day a surprise comes to him. Half a mile from his home,
and in the direction his thoughts often turn, is a cedar pasture where
blackberries grow in plenty, and here he is sent to pick them. It is
here, and while unconscious what Fate has in store for him, that he
suddenly hears a scream, and running toward him, down the path comes a
girl in a short dress with a