er, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road
on this mellow August morning. The dust was deep; the goldenrod waved
its imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river
chattered and sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighborhood,
and then, lapsing into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found
a vent for its spirits in the dashing and splashing of the falls.

Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then
wood-cutting; then eternal successions of ploughing, sowing, reaping,
haying, logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days.
Here and there a red or a yellow branch, painted only yesterday, caught
his eye and made him shiver. He was not ready for winter; his heart
still craved the summer it had missed.

Hello! What was that? Corn-stalks prone on the earth? Sign torn down and
lying flat in the grass? Blinds open, fire in the chimney?

He leaped from the wagon, and, flinging the reins to Alcestis Crambry,
said, "Stay right here out of sight, and don't you move till I call
you!" And striding up the green pathway, he flung open the kitchen door.

A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back, morning-glories
clambering round and round the window-frames, the table with shining
white cloth, the kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a
pan on the stove, the fire throwing out sweet little gleams of welcome
through the open damper. All this was taken in with one incredulous,
rapturous twinkle of an eye; but something else, too: Rose of all roses,
Rose of the river, Rose of the world, standing behind a chair, with her
hand pressed against her heart, her lips parted, her breath coming and
going! She was glowing like a jewel--glowing with the extraordinary
brilliancy that emotion gives to some women. She used to be happy in a
gay, sparkling way, like the shallow part of the stream as it chatters
over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full
happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun.

"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good
deal of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how
sorry I am, and it's the only way." She was trembling, and the words
came faster and faster. "I've been very wrong and foolish, and made you
very unhappy, but I have n't done what you would have hated most. I have
n't been engaged to Claude Merrill; he has n't so