f the LADY LIGEIA."

The Haunted Orchard

BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

From _Harper's Magazine_, January, 1912. By permission of Harper
and Brothers and Richard Le Gallienne.

Spring was once more in the world. As she sang to herself in the faraway
woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the
long winter. Daffodils flowered at the entrances to the Subway,
furniture removing vans blocked the side streets, children clustered
like blossoms on the doorsteps, the open cars were running, and the cry
of the "cash clo'" man was once more heard in the land.

Yes, it was the spring, and the city dreamed wistfully of lilacs and the
dewy piping of birds in gnarled old apple-trees, of dogwood lighting up
with sudden silver the thickening woods, of water-plants unfolding their
glossy scrolls in pools of morning freshness.

On Sunday mornings, the outbound trains were thronged with eager
pilgrims, hastening out of the city, to behold once more the ancient
marvel of the spring; and, on Sunday evenings, the railway termini were
aflower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard carried
in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes still shone with the
spring magic, in whose ears still sang the fairy music.

And as I beheld these signs of the vernal equinox I knew that I, too,
must follow the music, forsake awhile the beautiful siren we call the
city, and in the green silences meet once more my sweetheart Solitude.

As the train drew out of the Grand Central, I hummed to myself,

"I've a neater, sweeter maiden, in a greener, cleaner land"

and so I said good-by to the city, and went forth with beating heart to
meet the spring.

I had been told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast of
Connecticut, where the spring and I could live in an inviolate
loneliness--a place uninhabited save by birds and blossoms, woods and
thick grass, and an occasional silent farmer, and pervaded by the breath
and shimmer of the Sound.

Nor had rumor lied, for when the train set me down at my destination I
stepped out into the most wonderful green hush, a leafy Sabbath silence
through which the very train, as it went farther on its way, seemed to
steal as noiselessly as possible for fear of breaking the spell.

After a winter in the town, to be dropped thus suddenly into the intense
quiet of the country-side makes an almost ghostly impression upon one,
as of an enchanted silenc