rl suddenly stepped forth from
the doorway, and stood shading her face with her hands, looking towards
the sunset. The evening light lit up a jaunty spray of golden rod that
she had wreathed in her wavy hair, and gave a glow to the rounded
outlines of her handsome form. "There's a sparkler for you! And no saint,
neither!" was Biah's comment. "That crittur has got more prances and
capers in her than any three-year-old filly I knows on. He'll be cunning
that ever gets a bridle on her."

"Some says she's going to hev Jim Pitkin, and some says it's Bill," said
Abner, delighted to be able to add his mite of gossip to the stream while
it was flowing.

"She's sweet on Jim while he's round, and she's sweet on Bill when Jim's
up to college, and between um she gets took round to everything that
going. She gives one a word over one shoulder, and one over t'other, and
if the Lord above knows what's in that gal's mind or what she's up to, he
knows more than I do, or she either, else I lose my bet."

Biah made this admission with a firmness that might have been a model to
theologians or philosophers in general. There was a point, it appeared,
where he was not omniscient. His universal statistical knowledge had a
limit.

CHAPTER III.

THE SHADOW.

There is no moment of life, however festive, that does not involve the
near presence of a possible tragedy. When the concert of life is playing
the gayest and airiest music, it requires only the change of a little
flat or sharp to modulate into the minor key.

There seemed at first glance only the elements of joyousness and gayety
in the surroundings at the Pitkin farm. Thanksgiving was come--the
family, healthy, rosy, and noisy, were all under the one roof-tree. There
was energy, youth, intelligence, beauty, a pair of lovers on the eve of
betrothal--just in that misty, golden twilight that precedes the full
sunrise of avowed and accepted love--and yet behind it all was walking
with stealthy step the shadow of a coming sorrow.

"What in the world ails James?" said Diana as she retreated from the door
and surveyed him at a distance from her chamber window. His face was like
a landscape over which a thunder-cloud has drifted, and he walked beside
his father with a peculiar air of proud displeasure and repression.

At that moment the young man was struggling with the bitterest sorrow
that can befall youth--the breaking up of his life-purpose. He had just
come to a decision to s