ng it out loud to her, reveling in her lovely confusion.

When they finished, Leila telephoned to her father that she had arrived
at Rockville and was safe. If her voice wavered a little as she said
it, if her eyes filled at the trustfulness of his affectionate
response, these things were soon forgotten, as Barry caught up her
little bag, and they left the station, and started over the hills in
search of happiness.

The way was rather long, but they had thought it best to avoid trolley
or train or much-traveled roads, lest they be recognized. And so it
came about that they crossed fields, and slipped through the edges of
groves, and when the twilight fell Little-Lovely Leila danced along the
way, and Barry danced, too, until the moon came up round and gold above
the blackness of the distant hills.

Once they came to a stream that was like silver, and once they passed
through a ghostly orchard with budding branches, and once they came to
a farmhouse where a dog barked at them, and the dog and the orchard and
the budding trees and the stream all seemed to be saying:

"_You are running away---you are running away._"

And now they had walked a mile, and there was yet another.

"But what's a mile?" said Barry, and Little-Lovely Leila laughed.

She wore a frock of pale yellow, with a thick warm coat of the same
fashionable color. Her hat was demurely tied under her little chin
with black velvet ribbons. She was like a primrose of the spring--and
Barry kissed her.

"May I tell Dad, when I get home to-morrow night?" she asked.

"We'll wait until Sunday. April Fool's Day, Leila. We'll tell him,
and he will think it's a joke. And when he sees how happy we are, he
will know we were right."

So like children they refused to let the thought of the future mar the
joy of the present.

Once they rested on a fallen log in a little grove of trees. The wind
had died down, and the air was warm, with the still warmth of a
Southern spring. Between the trees they could see a ribbon of white
road which wound up to a shadowy church.

"The minister's house is next to the church," Barry told her; "in a
half hour from now you'll be mine, Leila. And no one can take you away
from me."

In the wonder of that thought they were silent for a time, then:

"How strange it will seem to be married, Barry."

"It seems the most natural thing in the world to me. But there will be
those who will say I shouldn't have let you."

"I