dew-drenched landscape,--fresh, odorous,
wonderfully sweet,--and a fire-fly's zigzag lantern came travelling
towards me across the darkening meadow. Everything had become very
still. It was that magic hour when the voices of the things of the day
are hushed, and the things of the night have not yet awakened. Only at
intervals the whippoorwill's call arose, like a pulse of pain. The voice
of the ploughman in the adjoining field came no more to my ears; a
respite from labor had come to both man and beast. The birds were still.
There was no flutter of wings, no piping cry. The earth rested for a
spell, and a solemn quietude stole over the scented fields.

I knew that I ought to be going--that I ought to have gone long ago, but
still I sat on the topmost rail of the fence, which stretched away like
a many-horned worm on either side of me. Supper was already cold, but I
had been a little late on several occasions before, and Mrs. Moss had
very kindly laid something aside for me. I was one whom she called "a
queer man who saw nothing outside of his books," and while this was not
altogether true, inasmuch as I was even now missing both supper and
books for another delight in which my soul revelled, still she bore with
my eccentricities, and I was thankful to her. "You should fall in love,
Mr. Stone," she said to me one day, half jestingly, "and that would get
you out of some of your staid ways." I replied with a smile that, as she
did not take young ladies to board, there was small chance of that, and
had thought of her remark no more. But now, in the tender gloaming of an
April day, I felt that I did love, and with as ardent a passion as any
man ever owned. I loved the rich sunlight, which I had watched fade
away, but which still lingered in my breast. I loved the greening of
Nature, and the yellowing of her harvest. I loved the soul-expanding
influence of sky and air, and the far-reaching, billowy fields. All
things that grew, and all things that moved in this, God's kingdom, I
loved. What else was there to love? A woman? Yes; but they lived for me
only in the pages of history and romance, and it was not likely that I,
a bookworm bachelor of forty-five, would ever meet the one to stir my
heart. And I feared them, a little. Out here, under the sky, with no one
to hear but Fido and the dumb silence, I can make this confession. I
knew she lived, somewhere, the one to whom my heart would cry, because
this is the plan of the Crea