ith the
odor of trees and sweetbrier, and to the song the breath of the south
wind played an accompaniment of exquisite cadence upon the leaves. I
seem to hear them singing,--Billy's piping treble, plaintive, quaint,
and almost sweet, carrying the tenor to Dic's bass. There was no
soprano. The concert was all tenor and bass, south wind, and rustling
leaves. The song helped Dic to express his happiness, and enabled Billy
to throw off the remnants of his heartache. Music is a surer antidote to
disappointment, past, present, and future, than the philosophy of all
the Stoics that ever lived; and if all who know the truth of that
statement were to read these pages, Billy Little would have many
millions of sympathizers.

Dic did not neglect Rita's note, but read it many times after he had
lighted the candle in the loft where he and Billy were to sleep. Long
after Billy had gone to bed Dic sat up, thinking of Rita, and anon
replenishing his store of ecstasy from the full fountain of her note.
After an unreasonable period of waiting Billy said:--

"If you intend to sit there all night, I wish you would smother the
candle. It's filling the room with bugs. Here is a straddle-bug of some
sort that's been trying to saw my foot off."

"In a moment, Billy Little," answered Dic. The moment stretched into
many minutes, until Billy, growing restive, threw his shoe at the candle
and felled it in darkness to the floor. Dic laughed and went to bed, and
Billy fell into so great a fit of laughter that he could hardly check
it. Neither slept much, and by sun-up Billy was riding homeward.

That he might be sure to be on time, Dic was at the step-off by
half-past two, and five minutes later Rita appeared. The step-off was at
a deep bend in the river where the low-hanging water-elm, the redbud,
and the dogwood, springing in vast luxuriance from the rich bottom
soil, were covered by a thick foliage of wild grape-vines.

"The river path," used only as a "horse road" and by pedestrians, left
the river at the upper bend, crossing the narrow peninsula formed by the
winding stream, and did not intrude upon the shady nook of raised ground
at the point of the peninsula next the water's edge. There was, however,
a horse path--wagon roads were few and far apart--on the opposite side
of the river. This path was little used, save by hunters, the west side
of the river being government land, and at that time a vast stretch of
unbroken forest. Rita had c