es took note of her exceeding beauty.
Some sweet, confusing influence, he knew not what, passed into his
blood.

The young men had brought a fiddler from the village, and it was not
long before most of the company were treading the measures of reels or
cotillons on the grass. How merry and happy they all were! How freely
and unembarrassedly they moved and talked! By and by all became involved
in the dance, and Jacob, left alone and unnoticed, drew nearer and
nearer to the gay and beautiful life from which he was expelled.

With a long-drawn scream of the fiddle the dance came to an end, and the
dancers, laughing, chattering, panting, and fanning themselves, broke
into groups and scattered over the enclosure before the house. Jacob was
surrounded before he could escape. Becky, with two lively girls in her
wake, came up to him and said: "Oh Mr. Flint, why don't you dance?"

If he had stopped to consider, he would no doubt have replied very
differently. But a hundred questions, stirred by what he had seen, were
clamoring for light, and they threw the desperate impulse to his lips.

"If I COULD dance, would you dance with me?"

The two lively girls heard the words, and looked at Becky with roguish
faces.

"Oh yes, take him for your next partner!" cried one.

"I will," said Becky, "after he comes back from his journey."

Then all three laughed. Jacob leaned against the tree, his eyes fixed on
the ground.

"Is it a bargain?" asked one of the girls.

"No," said he, and walked rapidly away.

He went to the house, and, finding that Robert had arrived, took his
hat, and left by the rear door. There was a grassy alley between the
orchard and garden, from which it was divided by a high hawthorn hedge.
He had scarcely taken three paces on his way to the meadow, when the
sound of the voice he had last heard, on the other side of the hedge,
arrested his feet.

"Becky, I think you rather hurt Jake Flint," said the girl.

"Hardly," answered Becky; "he's used to that."

"Not if he likes you; and you might go further and fare worse."

"Well, I MUST say!" Becky exclaimed, with a laugh; "you'd like to see me
stuck in that hollow, out of your way!"

"It's a good farm, I've heard," said the other.

"Yes, and covered with as much as it'll bear!"

Here the girls were called away to the dance. Jacob slowly walked up
the dewy meadow, the sounds of fiddling, singing, and laughter growing
fainter behind him.

"My journey!" h