the wind that streamed through their long aisles,--like incense
mingling with the exhalations of a crypt. He stopped now and then to
part the heavy fronds down to their roots in the dank moss, seeing
again, as he had told the editor, the weird SECOND twilight through
their miniature stems, and the microcosm of life that filled it. But,
even while paying this tribute to the accuracy of the unknown poetess,
he was, like his predecessor, haunted more strongly by the atmosphere
and melody of her verse. Its spell was upon him, too. Unlike Mr. Hamlin,
he did not sing. He only halted once or twice, silently combing his
straight narrow beard with his three fingers, until the action seemed
to draw down the lines of his face into limitless dejection, and an
inscrutable melancholy filled his small gray eyes. The few birds which
had hailed Mr. Hamlin as their successful rival fled away before the
grotesque and angular half-length of Mr. Bowers, as if the wind had
blown in a scarecrow from the distant farms.

Suddenly he observed the figure of a woman, with her back towards him,
leaning motionless against a tree, and apparently gazing intently in the
direction of Green Springs. He had approached so near to her that it
was singular she had not heard him. Mr. Bowers was a bashful man in the
presence of the other sex. He felt exceedingly embarrassed; if he could
have gone away without attracting her attention he would have done so.
Neither could he remain silent, a tacit spy of her meditation. He had
recourse to a polite but singularly artificial cough.

To his surprise, she gave a faint cry, turned quickly towards him, and
then shrank back and lapsed quite helpless against the tree. Her evident
distress overcame his bashfulness. He ran towards her.

"I'm sorry I frighted ye, ma'am, but I was afraid I might skeer ye more
if I lay low, and said nothin'."

Even then, if she had been some fair young country girl, he would have
relapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face and
figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past
forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which
was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her
forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped,
and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost
sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth
in an habitual smile, w