ation of
rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from
his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple
tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even
detain him with their familiar assurances.

He jumped up and stared hard at the west face of the clock, whose gilt
hands were still discernible in the fading light. It was five minutes of
eight.

When he slipped into the shadow of the Preaching Tree it had grown dark.
Fitful lightning flashed. In the meadow fireflies were thick. They made
him think of the eager beating of many fiery little hearts, exposed by
gloom, lost again in that opalescent glare on the horizon against which
the ragged leaves of elm and maple were hung like blobs of ink or swarms
of bees.

He breathed fast; he heard mysterious fluted calls. A victim of
torturing uncertainty, he strained his ear for that swift footfall.
Suddenly he felt her come upon him from behind, buoyant, like a warm
wave, and press firm hands over his eyelids. Her hair stung his cheek
like wire.

"Guess three times."

Rackby felt the strong beat of that adventurous heart like drums of
conquest. He crushed her in his arms until she all but cried out. There
was nothing he could say. Her breath carried the keen scent of crushed
checkerberry plums. She had been nibbling at tender pippins by the way,
like a wild thing.

The harbor master remembered later that he seemed to have twice the
number of senses appointed to mortals in that hour. A heavy fragrance
fell through the dusk out of the thick of the horse-chestnut tree. A
load of hay went by, the rack creaking, the driver sunk well out of
sight. He heard the dreaming note of the tree toad; frogs croaked in the
lush meadow, water babbled under the crazy wooden sidewalk.--The meadow
was one vast pulse of fireflies. He felt this industrious flame enter
his own wrists.

Then the birches over the way threshed about in a gust of wind. Almost
at once rain fell in heavy drops; blinds banged to and fro, a strong
smell of dust was in his nostrils, beat up from the road by driving
rain.

The girl first put the palm of her hand hard against his cheek, then
yielded, with a pliant and surprising motion of the whole body. Her eyes
were full of a strange, bright wickedness. Like torches they seemed to
cast a crimson light on the already glowing cheek.

Fascinated by this thought, Rackby bent closer. The tented leaves of the