early crickets that
chirped in the fresh summer grass probably sounded louder in John's
ears. The bright light on the white stones dazzled Mrs. Bickford's
eyes; and then all at once she felt light-hearted, and the sky seemed
to lift itself higher and wider from the earth, and she gave a sigh of
relief as her messenger came back along the path. "I know who I do
hope's got the right one," she said to herself. "There, what a touse I
be in! I don't see what I had to go and pick the old rose for,
anyway."

"I declare, they did look real handsome, aunt," said John's hearty
voice as he approached the chaise. "I set 'em up just as you told me.
This one fell out, an' I kept it. I don't know's you'll care. I can
give it to Lizzie."

He faced her now with a bright, boyish look. There was something gay
in his buttonhole,--it was the red rose.

Aunt Bickford blushed like a girl. "Your choice is easy made," she
faltered mysteriously, and then burst out laughing, there in front of
the burying-ground. "Come, get right in, dear," she said. "Well, well!
I guess the rose was made for you; it looks very pretty in your coat,
John."

She thought of Albert, and the next moment the tears came into her old
eyes. John was a lover, too.

"My first husband was just such a tall, straight young man as you be,"
she said as they drove along. "The flower he first give me was a
rose."

A SECOND SPRING.

I.

The Haydon farm was only a few miles from the sea, and the spring
wind, which had been blowing from the south all day, had gone into the
east. A chilly salt fog had begun to come in, creeping along where a
brook wound among the lower fields, like a ghostly serpent that was
making its way to shelter across the country.

The old Haydon house stood on high rising land, with two great
walnut-trees at one side, and a tall, thin, black-looking spruce in
front that had lost its mate. A comfortable row of round-headed old
apple-trees led all the way up a long lane from the main road. This
lane and the spacious side yard were scarred by wheel ruts, and the
fresh turf was cut up by the stamping feet of many horses. It was the
evening of a sad day,--the evening after Israel Haydon's wife's
funeral. Many of the people who were present had far to go, and so the
funeral feast had been served early.

The old place looked deserted. The dandelions, which had shone so
bright in the grass that morning, were all shut up, and the syringa
bushes in