cting girl, sitting
beside him, with her lap full of the September blooms he had gathered,
was thenceforth a part of his inmost life. Pure and beautiful as she
was, almost sacred in his regard, his heart dared to say--"I need her
and claim her!"

"Thee looks pale to-night, Richard," said Abigail, as they took their
seats at the supper-table. "I hope thee has not taken cold."

III.

"Will thee go along, Richard? I know where the rudbeckias grow," said
Asenath, on the following "Seventh-day" afternoon.

They crossed the meadows, and followed the course of the stream, under
its canopy of magnificent ash and plane trees, into a brake between
the hills. It was an almost impenetrable thicket, spangled with tall
autumnal flowers. The eupatoriums, with their purple crowns, stood like
young trees, with an undergrowth of aster and blue spikes of lobelia,
tangled in a golden mesh of dodder. A strong, mature odor, mixed alike
of leaves and flowers, and very different from the faint, elusive
sweetness of spring, filled the air. The creek, with a few faded leaves
dropped upon its bosom, and films of gossamer streaming from its bushy
fringe, gurgled over the pebbles in its bed. Here and there, on its
banks, shone the deep yellow stars of the flower they sought.

Richard Hilton walked as in a dream, mechanically plucking a stem of
rudbeckia, only to toss it, presently, into the water.

"Why, Richard! what's thee doing?" cried Asenath; "thee has thrown away
the very best specimen."

"Let it go," he answered, sadly. "I am afraid everything else is thrown
away."

"What does thee mean?" she asked, with a look of surprised and anxious
inquiry.

"Don't ask me, Asenath. Or--yes, I WILL tell you. I must say it to
you now, or never afterwards. Do you know what a happy life I've been
leading since I came here?--that I've learned what life is, as if I'd
never known it before? I want to live, Asenath,--and do you know why?"

"I hope thee will live, Richard," she said, gently and tenderly, her
deep-blue eyes dim with the mist of unshed tears.

"But, Asenath, how am I to live without you? But you can't understand
that, because you do not know what you are to me. No, you never guessed
that all this while I've been loving you more and more, until now I
have no other idea of death than not to see you, not to love you, not to
share your life!"

"Oh, Richard!"

"I knew you would be shocked, Asenath. I meant to have kept this to