the meek shout
cheerily, and took in the group with a lingering glance: Laura in the
shadow of the elms, Di perched on the fence, and Nan leaning far over
the gate with her hand above her eyes and the sunshine touching her
brown hair with gold. He waved his hat and turned away; but the music
seemed to die out of the blackbird's song, and in all the summer
landscape his eye saw nothing but the little figure at the gate.

"Bless and save us! here's a flock of people coming; my hair is in a
toss, and Nan's without her shoe; run! fly, girls! or the Philistines
will be upon us!" cried Di, tumbling off her perch in sudden alarm.

Three agitated young ladies, with flying draperies and countenances of
mingled mirth and dismay, might have been seen precipitating
themselves into a respectable mansion with unbecoming haste; but the
squirrels were the only witnesses of this "vision of sudden flight,"
and, being used to ground-and-lofty tumbling, didn't mind it.

When the pedestrians passed, the door was decorously closed, and no
one visible but a young man, who snatched something out of the road,
and marched away again, whistling with more vigor of tone than
accuracy of tune, "Only that, and nothing more."

* * * * *

HOW IT WAS FOUND.

Summer ripened into autumn, and something fairer than

"Sweet-peas and mignonette
In Annie's garden grew."

Her nature was the counterpart of the hill-side grove, where as a
child she had read her fairy tales, and now as a woman turned the
first pages of a more wondrous legend still. Lifted above the
many-gabled roof, yet not cut off from the echo of human speech, the
little grove seemed a green sanctuary, fringed about with violets, and
full of summer melody and bloom. Gentle creatures haunted it, and
there was none to make afraid; wood-pigeons cooed and crickets chirped
their shrill roundelays, anemones and lady-ferns looked up from the
moss that kissed the wanderer's feet. Warm airs were all afloat, full
of vernal odors for the grateful sense, silvery birches shimmered like
spirits of the wood, larches gave their green tassels to the wind, and
pines made airy music sweet and solemn, as they stood looking
heavenward through veils of summer sunshine or shrouds of wintry snow.
Nan never felt alone now in this charmed wood; for when she came into
its precincts, once so full of solitude, all things seemed to wear one
shape, familiar eyes looked at her from