married on Christmas Eve."

XII

THE EVE OF ALL SOULS'

Ruth saw Paul Colbert when he passed Cedar House for the first time
without stopping. He was riding very fast, and she feared that the Cold
Plague must be growing worse. Still, a glance at her chamber window
would not have delayed him, and she wondered why he did not turn his
head. She was almost sure he must know that she always gave the birds
their supper on the window-sill at that hour. She did not know that he
had seen her without looking, and had borne away in his heart a picture
of her slight white form, framed by the sun-lit window, and surrounded
by the fluttering birds. Disappointed, wondering, and vaguely troubled,
she gazed after him as long as he was visible amid the green gloom of
the forest path. And then when he was lost to sight, she turned sharply
on the boldest blue jay.

"Go 'way, you greedy thing! You startled me. I wasn't thinking about any
of you. How tiresome you all are! To teach you better manners, I am
going to throw this down to Trumpeter," leaning forward to see the swan
which stood on the grass below, anxiously watching everything that went
on above. "There! That is the last nice fat crumb."

The day had seemed endlessly long. She went wearily down the stairs
again, as she had done many times since morning. Neither the judge nor
William was at home. Miss Penelope and the widow Broadnax were in their
accustomed places, and matters around the hearth were going forward as
usual. Miss Penelope had asked fiercely in her mildest tone, what
anybody could expect to become of any country, when one of the biggest
towns in it built a theatre before building any kind of a church, as
Louisville had done. The widow Broadnax had replied in her loudest,
roughest voice, that she supposed the people there, as well as
elsewhere, could keep on getting married two or three times, and mixing
up families that otherwise might have lived in peace, just as well
without a church as with one. But the girl listened listlessly and
unsmilingly, hardly hearing what was said. Going out of the room she sat
for a long time on the doorstep, watching the forest path with patient
wistfulness. But there was no sign of the young doctor's coming back and
it was a relief when David came up the river bank. He reminded her that
she had asked him to go with her to the Sisters' house, and she arose
and went indoors to get her bonnet.

"You'd just as well take the or