Lydia's pale cheeks flushed with
pleasure.

Smiling faintly, she folded her knitted shawl over her bosom, and he
followed her across the grass to the little whitewashed gate of the garden.
There she entered softly, as if she were going into church, her light steps
barely treading down the tall grass strewn with rose leaves. Beyond the
high box borders the gay October roses bent toward her beneath a light
wind, and in the square beds tangles of summer plants still flowered
untouched by frost. The splendour of the scarlet sage and the delicate
clusters of the four-o'clocks and sweet Williams made a single blur of
colour in the sunshine, and under the neatly clipped box hedges, blossoms
of petunias and verbenas straggled from their trim rows across the walk.

As he stood beside her, Dan drew in a long breath of the fragrant air. "I
declare, it is like standing in a bunch of pinks," he remarked.

"There has been no hard frost as yet," returned Miss Lydia, looking up at
him. "Even the verbenas were not nipped, and I don't think I ever had them
bloom so late. Why, it is almost the first of October."

They strolled leisurely up and down the box-bordered paths, Miss Lydia
talking in her gentle, monotonous voice, and Dan bending his head as he
flicked at the tall grass with his riding-whip.

"He is a great lover of flowers," said the old lady after he had gone, and
thought in her simple heart that she spoke the truth.

For two days Dan's pride held him back, but the third being Sunday, he went
over in the afternoon with the pretence of a message from his grandmother.
As the day was mild the great doors were standing open, and from the drive
he saw Mrs. Ambler sitting midway of the hall, with her Bible in her hand
and her class of little negroes at her feet. Beyond her there was a strip
of green and the autumn glory of the garden, and the sunlight coming from
without fell straight upon the leaves of the open book.

She was reading from the gospel of St. John, and she did not pause until
the chapter was finished; then she looked up and said, smiling: "Shall I
ask you to join my class, or will you look for the girls out of doors?
Virginia, I think, is in the garden, and Betty has just gone riding down
the tavern road."

"Oh, I'll go after Betty," replied Dan, promptly, and with a gay "good-by"
he untied Prince Rupert and started at a canter for the turnpike.

A quarter of a mile beyond Uplands the tavern road branched off u