led along and turned into a park. The
gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees, making circles of feeble
light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground. Most of the
benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat
in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this
vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back
to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with
stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An
arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts
came back to a sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old
friend. She appeared to be the old ideal rather than the former.

All next day Keith thought of Lois Huntington. He wanted to go and see
her but he waited until the day after. He would not appear too eager.

He called at Norman's office for the pleasure of talking of her; but
Norman was still absent. The following afternoon he called at Norman's
house. The servant said Mrs. Norman was out.

"Miss Huntington?"

"She left this morning."

Keith walked up the street feeling rather blank. That night he started
for the South. But Lois Huntington was much in his thoughts. He wondered
if life would open for him again. When a man wonders about this, life
has already opened.

By the time he reached New Leeds, he had already made up his mind to
write and ask Miss Abby for an invitation to Brookford, and he wrote his
father a full account of the girl he had known as a child, over which
the old General beamed.

He forgave people toward whom he had hard feelings. The world was better
than he had been accounting it. He even considered more leniently than
he had done Mrs. Wentworth's allowing Ferdy Wickersham to hang around
her. It suddenly flashed on him that, perhaps, Ferdy was in love with
Lois Huntington. Crash! went his kind feelings, his kind thoughts. The
idea of Ferdy making love to that pure, sweet, innocent creature! It was
horrible! Her innocence, her charming friendliness, her sweetness, all
swept over him, and he thrilled with a sense of protection.

Could he have known what Wickersham had done to poison her against him,
he would have been yet more enraged. As it was, Lois was at that time
back at her old home; but with how different feelings from those which
she had had but a few days before! Sometimes she hated Keith, or, at
least, declared to herself that she hated