ew secret and the need of a confidant.

"Ther mornin' ye fust come by ... an' stopped thar in ther high road ...
I'd jest been readin' somethin' thet ... was writ by one of my
foreparents ... way back, upwards of a hundred y'ars ago, I reckon." She
paused but he nodded his interest so sympathetically that she went on,
reassured; "She told how come she planted this hyar tree ... in them
days when ther Injins still scalped folks ... an' she writ down jest
what her husband looked like."

"What _did_ he look like?" inquired the man, gravely, and the girl found
herself no longer bashful with him but at ease, as with an old friend.

"Hit war right then I looked out an' seed ye," she said, simply, "an'
'peared like ye'd plum bodily walked outen them pages of handwrite.
Thet's why I asked whether yore folks didn't dwell hyar onc't. Mebby we
mout be kin."

Cal Maggard shook his head.

"My folks moved away to Virginny so fur back," he informed her, "thet
hit's apt ter be right distant kinship."

"This was all fur back," she reminded him, and in order that the sound
of her voice might continue, he begged:

"Tell me somethin' else erbout this tree ... an' what ye read in ther
book."

She was standing close to him, and as she talked it seemed to him that
the combined fragrances of the freshly washed night all came from her.
He was conscious of the whippoorwill calls and the soft crooning of the
river, but only as far-away voices of accompaniment, and she, answering
to dreamy influences, too, went on with her recitals from the journal of
the woman who had been a lady in Virginia and who probably lay buried
under the spot on which they stood.

"Hit's right amazin' ter listen at ye," he said at length. "But
plentiful amazin' things comes ter pass."

An amazing thing was coming to pass with him at that moment, for his
arms were twitching with an eagerness to close about her, and he seemed
struggling against forces of impulse stronger than himself.

It was amazing because he had sworn to avoid the folly of chancing
everything on too hasty a love declaration, and because the discipline
of patient self-control was strong in him. It was amazing, too, because,
with a warning recently received and appreciated, his ears had become
deaf to all sounds save her voice, and when the thicket stirred some
fifty yards away he heard nothing.

Even the girl herself would ordinarily have paused to bend her head and
listen to an unaccustome