leaves. Mr. Olyphant's house stood on
one side of a woody slope, rocks and trees crowned to the very top; in
the ravine below, the brook Faith had heard. She could see it now,
foaming along, quieting itself as it came into smoother circumstances.
The most of its noise indeed seemed to be made in some place out of
sight, higher up. This slope was not very high, other ridges before and
beyond it looked down, not frowningly, in their October dress. Not much
else could be seen, it was a mere leafy nest. A little faint line of
smoke floated over the opposite ridge, glimpses of mountain paths here
and there caught the sunlight, below Faith's window Mr. Linden stood,
like some statue, with folded arms.

Faith hastily finished her dressing. As soon as that was done she knelt
at her window again, to look and to pray. Those hills looked very near
the sky; life-work there seemed almost to touch heaven. Nay, did it
not? Heaven bent over the glorious earth and over the work to be done
there, with the same clear, fair, balmy promise and truth. Faith could
almost have joined the birds in their singing; her heart did; and her
heart's singing was as pure and as grave as theirs. Not the careless
glee that sees and wants nothing but roses in the way; but the deep
love and gladness, both earthly and heavenly, that makes roses grow out
of every soil. So she looked, when Mr. Linden first discerned her,
venturing from the hall door and searching round for him.

"O little Sunbeam!" he said, "how you 'glint' upon everything! there is
a general illumination when you come out of the door. How do you feel
this morning?--rested?"--

"As if I never had been tired." And Faith might have said, as if she
never would be tired again; but only her eye revelled in such soft
boasting. "Where is our home now, Endecott?"

The ridge before them, on the other side of the ravine, rose up with
swifter ascent into the blue air, and looked even more thick set with
orange trees: but where it slanted down towards the more open country,
a little break in the trees spoke of clearing and meadow and
cultivation. The clearing was for the most part on the other side, but
a bit of one green field, dotted with two or three dark objects, swept
softly over the ridge line.

"Are you in the sight-seeing mood?" said Mr. Linden, with a look as
gladsome as her own.--"Yes; and seeing sights too. But where is that,
Endy?"

"I shall take you there by degrees; wait a moment," a