he door, stood looking half-wildly out into the haunted
twilight.

The faint sound of the brook rose liquid in the quiet evening air.

There, where the butternut tree stood, had been the garden!

The white birches answered with a rustling stir in all their lightly
poised leaves.

Up there, where the oaks were, had been the hay-field!

The twilight darkened. Through the forest, black on the crest of the
overhanging mountain, shone suddenly the evening star.

There, before the door, had stood the waiting wood-sled!

The girl caught through the gathering dusk a gleam of magenta from the
corner of the clearing.

Two hermit thrushes, distant in the forest, began to send up their
poignant antiphonal evening chant.

THE HEYDAY OF THE BLOOD

The older professor looked up at the assistant, fumbling fretfully with a
pile of papers. "Farrar, what's the _matter_ with you lately?" he said
sharply.

The younger man started, "Why...why..." the brusqueness of the other's
manner shocked him suddenly into confession. "I've lost my nerve,
Professor Mallory, that's what the matter with me. I'm frightened to
death," he said melodramatically.

"What _of_?" asked Mallory, with a little challenge in his tone.

The flood-gates were open. The younger man burst out in exclamations,
waving his thin, nervous, knotted fingers, his face twitching as he spoke.
"Of myself...no, not myself, but my body! I'm not well...I'm getting worse
all the time. The doctors don't make out what is the matter...I don't
sleep ... I worry...I forget things, I take no interest in life...the
doctors intimate a nervous breakdown ahead of me...and yet I rest ... I
rest...more than I can afford to! I never go out. Every evening I'm in bed
by nine o'clock. I take no part in college life beyond my work, for fear
of the nervous strain. I've refused to take charge of that summer-school
in New York, you know, that would be such an opportunity for me ... if I
could only sleep! But though I never do anything exciting in the
evening ... heavens! what nights I have. Black hours of seeing myself in a
sanitarium, dependent on my brother! I never ... why, I'm in
hell ... that's what the matter with me, a perfect hell of ignoble
terror!"

He sat silent, his drawn face turned to the window. The older man looked
at him speculatively. When he spoke it was with a cheerful, casual quality
in his voice which made the other look up at him surprised.

"You don't su