ad and level head, leaving it rigid the next moment,
so that it reminded him of the snake, and he laughed. At which she
laughed too, and tripped away.

Leonidas went back and caught his trout. But even this triumph did not
remove a vague sense of disappointment which had come over him. He had
often pictured to himself a Heaven-sent meeting with her in the woods,
a walk with her, alone, where he could pick her the rarest flowers and
herbs and show her his woodland friends; and it had only ended in this,
and an exhibition of William Henry! He ought to have saved HER from
something, and not her husband. Yet he had no ill-feeling for Burroughs,
only a desire to circumvent him, on behalf of the unprotected, as he
would have baffled a hawk or a wildcat. He went home in dismal spirits,
but later that evening constructed a boyish letter of thanks to the
apocryphal Belcher and told him all about--the trout!

He brought her his letter the next day, and received hers to inclose.
She was pleasant, her own charming self again, but she seemed more
interested in other things than himself, as, for instance, the docile
William Henry, whose hiding-place he showed, and whose few tricks she
made him exhibit to her, and which the gratified Leonidas accepted as a
delicate form of flattery to himself. But his yearning, innocent spirit
detected a something lacking, which he was too proud to admit even to
himself. It was his own fault; he ought to have waited for her, and not
gone for the trout!

So a fortnight passed with an interchange of the vicarious letters, and
brief, hopeful, and disappointing meetings to Leonidas. To add to his
unhappiness, he was obliged to listen to sneering disparagement of his
goddess from his family, and criticisms which, happily, his innocence
did not comprehend. It was his own mother who accused her of shamefully
"making up" to the good-looking expressman at church last Sunday, and
declared that Burroughs ought to "look after that wife of his,"--two
statements which the simple Leonidas could not reconcile. He had seen
the incident, and only thought her more lovely than ever. Why should not
the expressman think so too? And yet the boy was not happy; something
intruded upon his sports, upon his books, making them dull and vapid,
and yet that something was she! He grew pale and preoccupied. If he had
only some one in whom to confide--some one who could explain his hopes
and fears. That one was nearer than he thoug