the others stood silent on the
porch and watched them go. A hundred yards down the road, Adam Forbes
drew rein. A guitar throbbed low behind them.

"Hark," he said.

Edith Harkey stood in the shaft of golden light from the doorway; she
bore herself like the Winged Victory; her voice thrilled across the
quiet of the moonlit night:

"_Never the nightingale,
Oh, my dear!
Never again the lark
Thou wilt hear;
Though dusk and the morning still_

"_Tap at thy window-sill,
Though ever love call and call
Thou wilt not hear at all,
My dear, my dear!_"

The sad notes melted into the sweet pagan heartbreak of the enchanted
night. They turned to go.

"A fine girl," said Adam Forbes. "The only girl! To-morrow--"

He fell silent; again in his heart that parting cadence knelled with
keen and intolerable sorrow. The roots of his hair prickled, ants
crawled on his spine. So tingles the pulsing blood, perhaps, when a
man is fey, when the kisses of his mouth are numbered.

Edith went home to the big lonely house, but Lyn Dyer and Hobby Lull
lingered by the low fire. Mr. Lull assumed a dignified pose before the
fireplace, feet well apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He
regarded Miss Dyer with a twinkling eye.

"Have you anything to say to the court before sentence is pronounced?"
he inquired with lofty judicial calm.

Miss Dyer avoided his glance. She stood drooping before him; she
looked to one side at the floor; she looked to the other side at the
floor. The toe of her little shoe poked and twisted at a knot in the
floor.

"Extenuating circumstances?" she suggested hopefully.

"Name them to the court."

"The--the moon, I guess." The inquisitive shoe traced crosses and
circles upon the knot in the flooring. "And Charlie See," she added
desperately. "Charlie has such eloquent eyes, Hobby--don't you think?"

She raised her little curly head for a tentative peep at the court;
her own eyes were shining with mischief. The court unclasped its
hands.

"I ought to shake you," declared Hobby. But he did not shake her at
all.

"You're the only young man in Garfield who wears his face
clean-shaven," remarked Lyn reflectively, a little later. "Charlie
would look much better without a mustache, I think."

He pushed her away and tipped up her chin with a gentle hand so that
he could look into her eyes. "Little brown lady with curly eyes and
laughing hair--are you q