that sunshine of the breast which puts
a spirit of joy in everything. They thought of the scene long years
afterwards, and saw it bathed in the golden hues of memory; and
sighed to think that those bright days and the child-faces had
departed--faces lit up radiantly with so much tenderness and joy.

Do not all of us? Does the old laughter never ring again through
all the brilliant past, so full of bright, and beautiful, and happy
figures--figures which illustrated and advanced that past with such a
glory as now lives not upon earth? Balder the beautiful is gone, but
still Hermoder sees him through the gloom--only the form is dead, the
love, and joy, and light of brilliant eyes remains, shrined in their
memory. Thus, we would fain believe that no man loses what once made
him happy--that for every one a tender figure rises up at times from
that horizon, lit with blue and gold, called youth: some loving
figure, with soft, tender smiles, and starlike eyes, and arms which
beckon slowly to the weary traveller. The memory of the old youthful
scenes and figures may be deadened by the inexorable world, but still
the germ remains; and this old lost tradition of pure love, and joy,
and youth, comes back again to bless us.

The young girls and their companions passed the hours very merrily
upon the summit of the tall hill, from which the old border town was
visible far below, its chimneys sending upward slender lines of smoke,
which rose like blue and golden staves of olden banners, then were
flattened, and so melted into air.

Winchester itself had slowly sunk into gloom, for the evening was
coming on, and a storm also. The red light streamed from a mass of
clouds in the west, which resembled some old feudal castle in flames;
and the fiery furzes of the sunset only made the blackness of the mass
more palpable.

Then this light gradually disappeared: a murky gloom settled down upon
the conflagration, as of dying fires at midnight, and a cool wind from
the mountains rose and died away, and rose again, and swept along in
gusts, and shook the trees, making them grate and moan.

Verty rose to his feet.

"In five minutes we shall have a storm," he said. "Come, Redbud--and
Miss Fanny."

Even as he spoke, the far distance pushed a blinding mass toward them,
and a dozen heavy drops began to fall.

"We cannot get back!" cried Ralph.

"But we can reach the house at the foot of the hill!" said Fanny.

"No time to lose!"

And so