ian
airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field
grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other
with a witching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side,
or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a
commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the
delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the
runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the
cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll
and rumble of earth's commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of
nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand
to turn the page. "Is it that I am lonely!" she murmured.

The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she
entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had
always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through
this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint
Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep
and pure within her. "Lonely!" she whispered; "I will not be lonely. To
some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall
one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser
share? I will remember my one day and be glad."

"My one day!" She caught herself at the utterance and literally started
at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen
but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?

With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was hurrying on,
when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow
voice exclaimed in her ear,

"Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?"

It was Clarence Ensign.

The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself.
She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of
her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone
West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of
his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.

At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking
up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry,
lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring
his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,

"What shall be done to the man who delights in surp