onded John. "I suppose a man oughtn't to try
to learn to ride without somebody to go along with him."

The boy had just finished harnessing the animal, when March started with
a new thought. He steadied himself, turned away, drew something from his
pocket, consulted and returned it--it was neither a watch nor a
weapon--and rejoining the stable-keeper said, with a sweet smile and a
red face:

"See here, it's only three miles over there. If you'll let me change my
mind----"

"You'll walk it--O all right! If you change your mind again you can let
us know on your return."

John took a way that went by a bridge. It was longer than the other, by
way of a ferry, but time, for the moment, was a burden and either way
was beautiful. The Sabbath was all smiles. On the Hampshire hills and
along the far meanderings of the Connecticut a hundred tints of perfect
springtide beguiled the heart to forget that winter had ever been. Above
a balmy warmth of sunshine and breeze in which the mellowed call of
church-bells floated through the wide valley from one to another of half
a dozen towns and villages, silvery clouds rolled and unrolled as if in
stately play, swung, careened, and fell melting through the marvellous
blue, or soared and sunk and soared again. Keeping his eyes much on such
a heaven, our inexperienced walker thought little of close-fitting boots
until he had to sit down, screened from the public road by a hillock,
and, with a smile of amusement but hardly of complacency, smooth a cruel
wrinkle from one of his very striped socks. Just then a buckboard
rumbled by, filled with pretty girls, from the college, he guessed,
driving over to that other college town, seven miles across the valley,
where a noted Boston clergyman was to preach to-day; but the
foot-passenger only made himself a bit smaller and chuckled at the lucky
privacy of his position. As they got by he stole a peep at their
well-dressed young backs, and the best dressed and shapeliest was
Barbara Garnet's. The driver was Henry Fair. It was then that the
bobolink, for the first time in his life, saw and heard John March.

LXXI.

IN THE WOODS

The sun mounted on to noon and nature fell into a reverent stillness;
but in certain leafy aisles under the wooded bluffs and along that
narrow stream where Mrs. Fair some three weeks earlier had walked with
the widow, the Sabbath afternoon was scarcely half spent before the air
began to be crossed and cleft wit