had been with Reuben or with Abel.

It was a brilliant day, in the midst of a brief spell of Indian
summer. When they left the train and drove along the corduroy road from
Applegate, the forest on either side of them was gorgeous in gold and
copper. Straight ahead, at the end of the long vista, they could see a
bit of cloudless sky beyond the low outlines of a field; and both sky
and field were wrapped in a faint purplish haze. The few belated yellow
butterflies, floating over the moist places in the road, seemed to drift
pensively in the autumnal stillness.

On the long drive hardly a word was spoken, for Gay was occupied with
the cigar he had not had time to smoke after breakfast, and Molly was
thinking that but for Reuben's death, she would never have accepted Mr.
Jonathan's legacy and parted from Abel.

"All this happened because I went along the Haunt's Walk and not across
the east meadow that April afternoon," she thought, "but for that,
Jonathan would not have kissed me and Abel and I should not have
quarrelled." It was such a little thing--only the eighth of a mile which
had decided her future. She might just as easily have turned aside if
she had only suspected. But life was like that--you never suspected
until things had happened, and the little decisions, made in the midst
of your ignorance, committed you to your destiny.

The horses came out of the wood, plodding over the sandy soil, which
marked the beginning of the open country. Across the fields toward
Bottom's Ordinary, scattered groups of people were walking in twos and
threes, showing like disfiguring patches in the midst of the golden
rod and the life-everlasting. Old Adam, hobbling up the path, while
the horses stopped to drink at the well, touched his hat as he steadied
himself with the aid of his big knotted stick.

"It's a fine sight to see you back among us," he said. "If you'd come a
couple of hours earlier you'd have been in time for the wedding?"

"What wedding?" asked Gay in a clear voice, but moved by some intuitive
knowledge of what the answer would be, he did not look at Molly.

"Why, Solomon Hatch's daughter, Judy, to be sure. She's just married
the miller." For a minute he stopped, coughed, spat and then added: "Mr.
Mullen tied 'em up tight all by heart, without so much as glancin' at
the book. Ah, that young parson may have his faults, an' be unsound on
the doctrine of baptism, but he can lay on matrimony with as pious an
air as