he country quiet was unlike anything which Erica had
known before. There was, indeed, at first a good deal of anxiety about
her father. His acquiescence in idleness, his perfect readiness to spend
whole days without even opening a book, proved the seriousness of his
condition. For the first week he was more completely prostrated than she
had ever known him to be. He would spend whole days on the river, too
tired even to speak, or would drag himself as far as the neighboring
wood and stretch himself at full length under the trees while she sat by
sketching or writing. Bur Brian was satisfied with his improvement when
he came down on one of his periodical visits, and set Erica's mind at
rest about him.

"You father has such a wonderful constitution," he said as they paced to
and fro in the little garden. "I should not be surprised if, in a couple
of months, he is as strong as ever; though most men would probably feel
such an overstrain to the end of their days."

After that, the time at Milford was pure happiness. Erica learned to
love every inch of that lovely neighborhood, from the hill of Rocksbury
with its fir-clad heights, to Trencharn Lake nestled down among the
surrounding heath hills. In after years she liked to recall all those
peaceful days, days when time had ceased to exist at any rate, as
an element of friction in life. There was no hurrying here, and the
recollection of it afterward was a perpetual happiness. The quiet river
where they had one day seen an otter, a marked event in their uneventful
days; the farm with its red gables and its crowd of gobbling turkeys;
the sweet-smelling fir groves with their sandy paths; and their own
particular wood where beeches, oaks, and silvery birch trees were
intermingled, with here and there a tall pine sometimes stately and
erect, sometimes blown aslant by the wind.

Here the winding paths were bordered with golden moss, and sheltered by
a tangled growth of bracken and bramble with now and then a little clump
of heather or a patch of blue harebells. Every nook of that place grew
familiar to them and had its special associations. There was the shady
part under the beeches where they spent the hot days, and this was
always associated with fragments of "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar." There
was the cozy nook on the fir hill where in cool September they had read
volume after volume of Walter Scott, Raeburn not being allowed to have
anything but light literature, and caring