ons; and standing before it, seems to count
each stone which has been added through the day, as if he were
reckoning up the months yet remaining to him of life and happiness.

I never speak to him during these expeditions. I go with him because
he does not forbid me to do so, but we never exchange a word till we
have left the forest behind us and stand again within the village
streets. If I did speak I might learn something of what is going on in
his bitter and burning heart, but I never have the courage to do so,
perhaps because I had rather not know what he plans or purposes.

She is not as daintily rounded as she was once. Her cheek is thinner,
and there is a tremulous move to her lip I never saw in it in the old
coquettish days. Is she not happy in her betrothal, or are her fears
of Orrin greater than her confidence in me? It must be the latter, for
Colonel Schuyler is a lover in a thousand, and scarcely a day passes
without some new evidence of his passionate devotion. She ought to be
happy, if she is not, and I am sure there is not another woman in town
but would feel herself the most favored of her sex if she had the half
of Juliet's prospects before her. But Juliet was ever wayward; and
simply because she ought to increase in beauty and joy, she pales and
pines and gets delicate, and makes the hearts of her lovers grow mad
with fear and longing.

* * * * *

Where have I been? What have I seen, and what do the events of this
night portend? As Orrin and myself were returning from our usual visit
to the house in the woods--it is well up now, and its huge empty
square looms weirdly enough in the moonlighted forest,--we came out
upon the churchyard in front of the meeting-house, and Orrin said:

"You may come with me or not, I do not care; but I am going in amongst
these graves. I feel like holding companionship with dead people
to-night."

"Then so do I," said I, for I was not deceived by his words. It was
not to hold companionship with the dead, but with the living, that he
chose to linger there. The churchyard is in a direct line with her
house, and, sitting on the meeting-house steps one can get a very good
view of the windows of her room.

"Very well," he sighed, and disdained to say more.

As for myself, I felt too keenly the weirdness of the whole situation
to do more than lean my back against a tree and wait till his fancy
wearied of the moonlight and silence. The stone