: then I suffered very much.

And evening came....

* * * * *

By-and-by, having heartened myself with courageous plans, I stepped
out, with the feet of a man, upon the Whisper Cove road. I had it in
mind to enjoy with Judith and John Cather the tender disclosure of
their love. I would kiss Judith, by Heaven! thinks I: I would kiss her
smile and blushes, whatever she thought of the deed; and I would wring
John Cather's fragile right hand until his teeth uncovered and he
groaned for mercy. 'Twas fearsome weather, then, so that, overwrought
in the spirit as I was, I did not fail to feel the oppression of it
and the instinctive alarm it aroused. 'Twas very still and heavy and
sullen and uneasy, 'twas pregnant of fears, like a moment of suspense:
I started when an alder branch or reaching spruce limb struck me. In
this bewildering weather there were no lovers on the road; the
valleys, the shadowy nooks, the secluded reaches of path, lay vacant
in the melancholy dusk. 'Twas not until I came to the last hill,
whence the road tumbled down to a cluster of impoverished cottages,
listlessly clinging to the barren rock of Whisper Cove, that I found
Judith. John Cather was not about: the maid was with Aunt Esther All,
the gossip, and was now so strangely agitated that I stopped in sheer
amazement. That the child should be abject and agonized before the
grim, cynical tattler of Whisper Cove! That she should gesticulate in
a way so passionate! That she should fling her arms wide, that she
should cover her face with her hands, that she should in some grievous
disturbance beat upon her heart! I could not make it out. 'Twas a
queer way, thinks I, to express the rapture of her fortune; and no
suspicion enlightened me, because, I think, of the paralysis of
despair upon my faculties.

I approached.

"Go 'way!" she cried.

I would not go away: 'twas Aunt Esther, the gossip, that went, and in
a rout--with a frightened backward glance.

"Go 'way!" Judith pleaded. "I'm not able to bear it, Dannie. Oh, go
back!"

'Twas an unworthy whim, and I knew it to be so, whatever the vagaries
of maids may be, however natural and to be indulged, at these crises
of emotion. She had sent John Cather away, it seemed, that she might
be for a space alone, in the way of maids at such times, as I had been
informed; and she would now deny to me the reflection of her
happiness.

"'Tis unkind," I chided, "not to