out and making his daring
proposal, and going 'safe through shoal and rock!' Oh, how the captain
must have stood breathless! And the English coming too late! I'm glad
someone put it in stirring verse."

Helen paused with a scarlet face. She never talked this way to anyone
except Mr. Warfield.

"Yes," said Mrs. Van Dorn, "I have seen the man who wrote it, talked
with him and his lovely wife, who wrote verses quite as beautiful. I
think you like stirring poems," in a half inquiry.

"Yes, I do," she replied tremulously, and in her girlish enthusiasm she
thought she could have fallen down at the feet of the man who wrote
Herve Riel. She never had thought of his being an actual living man.

"And do you know Macaulay's 'Horatius'?"

"Oh, I don't know very much--only the poems in the reading books, and a
few that Mr. Warfield had. I know most of Longfellow."

"The Center is rather behind the towns around, although it is the oldest
part; settled more than a hundred years ago. But it is largely farms.
The railroad passed it by some fifteen years ago, and the stations have
improved rapidly. Why, we have quite a library here, and the High School
for more than a half the county," explained Mrs. Dayton.

"It's not as pretty as this Hope. And the range of hills to the
northeast--I suppose you call them mountains--and the river, add so much
to it."

[Illustration: Helen put her head down suddenly, and pressed her lips on
the jewelled hand.--_Page 55._]

"And we have only a little creek that empties into Piqua River, and a
pond in a low place, that we skate on in the winter," said Helen
rather mirthfully. "I can't help wondering what the ocean is like, and
the great lakes, and Niagara Falls, and the Mississippi River with all
its mouths emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. And the Amazon, and the
Andes."

"And Europe, and the Alps, and the lovely lakes, and the Balkans, and
the Gulf of Arabia, and India, and the Himalayas, and Japan----"

"Oh, dear, what a grand world!" exclaimed Helen, when Mrs. Van Dorn
paused. "I don't suppose anyone has ever seen it all," and her tone was
freighted with regret.

"I have seen a good deal of it. I have been round the world, and lived
in many foreign cities."

"Oh! oh!" Helen put her head down suddenly and pressed her lips on the
jeweled hand. The unconscious and impulsive homage touched the old
heart.

"And people who have done wonderful things, who have painted pictures,
and made be