A Roadside Romance

I.

FROM the village of Flint Hill, placed in a high recess between three roundtopped eminences, you can see along the road to Hollowdale at least half a mile. This is somewhat remarkable, because in general it is a winding and elusive route, following closely the deviations of a much-indented highland ridge. And even here, after running on demurely for the half-mile, overshadowed at intervals by the trees that cluster around an occasional house, it suddenly climbs a transverse rib of rock that strikes across its course, and, from the high, decided sunniness of the summit, slips at once out of sight. Only, from the little natural basin beyond towers the sturdy top of a huge elm, giving silent assurance that the road has passed on safely in that direction. It was on this bounteous elm-top that farmer Fayrewether had concentrated his attention as he stood, one day in summer, at the door of his house on the windy northern hill, — the hill which had so long stood godfather to the neighboring cross-road cluster. Presently, two small figures of boys in bunchy garments appeared in the white noon-glare on the road, hitherside of the elm, making their way slowly toward the farm-house.

“ Guess it’s about time to hitch up the wagon for Miss Weston, Timothy,” said Mr. Fayrewether, in a loud, admonitory voice,, but without looking around.

Upon this a sturdy young man, wearing indescribably dirty trousers tucked into his boots, came out of the house and passed on toward the wide-mouthed barn. His face, sun-burned to an even but rather inflamed scarlet, was set around with loose-lying whiskers of a soft fibre and yellow hue.

“ It’s the one o’clock she wants to go by, an’t it? ” he asked, on the way.

“Yes.”

This brief exchange of ideas seemed to have excited in Timothy’s mind an amusing train of meditation, for he paused a moment, with his hand against one half of the barn door, which had not been opened entirely, and smiled in an absent manner; indulging only one side of his mouth in this dreamy pleasure, however, and quickly closing his lips again. Then he stepped within, and was presently heard calling out, “ Come, get out here, Chester! ” his voice being accompanied by the irregular stamping of a horse backing out of his stall.

In the mean time, the two boys in bunchy garments, who also wore little caps with home-made visors of an extravagant pattern, were trudging slowly homeward to the Fayrewether house. Behind them, in the hollow beyond the ridge, they had left the school - house, with no obligation to return thither until the next September. But if the respite of vacation was welcome to them, it was even more so to Miss Weston, the teacher, who, at the very moment when little Peter and Harry mounted the ridge in the road, stood within the small, unlovely porch of the building in which she had held sway for many months past.

She was a comely young woman. Her figure was strong and graceful; but she was clothed in a plain dress of some only semi-silken gray stuff, interwoven with fine black lines. At the neck a soft white frill issued easily from the circling line around her throat, and her face, with its boldly recurved chin, full, quiet lips, and wholesome though not rosy cheeks, seemed to crown fitly this modest sweetness of her attire.

For some time she stood motionless in the porch, looking at the great elm which grew on the other side of the road. Its massy foliage rose in the grasp of great, tortuous limbs, that seemed to have reared themselves up three or four times for a final flight, and yet each time to have wrought out a loftier twist, quite surpassing the limit of their first intent. But, at last, a general gladness and satisfied repose had settled upon its rounding summits ; and a family of golden robins, having established themselves there, flashed every now and then through the exquisite greenery, or made their loud notes echo from the heart of the labyrinthine bower. Beneath, on the road, the dust lay in a thick powder, creased and flattened by the tracks of many wheels; but just at this point a rivulet ran out from a gap in the northern road-wall, and gurgled under the highway through a rough archway of stone. On the southern side it was surprised into a considerable expanse, and through the shallow pool a rude track led from the road, remounting again immediately. Marnie (we may call her by her given name) crossed over and came down to the pool. There was an old trough there, but it had fallen away at one end. Through this opening the stream had poured itself, and with such a sweet excess that the trough was more than brimmed by its cool current, and lay, like some curious, forgotten fragment, imprisoned under the crystal surface. Even the idle but fantastic weeds that grew beside it, being submerged by the water, had received a coating of light-hued mud that gave them a soft, leathern smoothness; so that they, too, acquired an unusual air of rarity and remoteness.

“ Oh what a delightful idea!” said Marnie, aloud, and pressing her hands together, as she looked into the clear, dark, dimpling water that filled the trough. She had always loved the little reservoir, and it had just now entered her head that some wayfaring poet should stop and drink at this homely fountain, and draw inspiration from it. And if he could have let that fresh current flow into his songs, what a poet he would have been!

At this moment a leisurely rattling of wheels that turned on old and roomy axles reached her ears, from the other side of the ridge. Marnie stooped quickly and picked several stems of forget-me-nots from a cluster which had sprung up amid the grass, close to the dripping stones of the tunnel under the road. As she rose again she beheld Timothy Fayrewether approaching by the short, swift descent of the road, and seated in an ancient, unvenerable open buggy. In another instant he had dashed down the side-track and, driving through the water, came to a stand beside her. She mounted into the buggy with him, but as she did so she saw how turbid the water had become behind it. Alas for her imaginary poet! The thick mud was crowding into the cool, clear flood that filled the trough, and all the glassy expanse in which she had mirrored her fancies the moment before was broken into bewildering wrinkles. Timothy saw nothing of the ruin he had effected, and was intent only on setting his horse forward once more. Marnie sat by him in silence.

“I see you ’ve got some forget-menots,” he said, at last.

“ Yes,” she replied, looking up. There was always a sedate and lucid frankness in her eyes which the young man could not wholly comprehend, a simplicity which seemed to refuse any ordinary admiration from others, such as Timothy might naturally have felt toward her. And now there was a lurking shade of sadness in them, too. Whether disconcerted by this, or not, Timothy ventured no further in conversation.

Mr. Fayrewether was waiting for them, at the house, with a small, hide-bound trunk; and Mrs. Fayrewether stood at the open door, with a large spoon in one hand, and shading her eyes with the other.

“ Good-by,” she said, as her eyes met Marnie’s; “ and be sure you come back next September.”

“Yes; I don’t know what we should do at all, without ye,” added the farmer.

A sudden sense of hard restraint oppressed the teacher, as she thought of the obligations upon her to return to her post in the school. But she only said, with a slight inflection of sadness, “ Oh, never fear. I shall come back to Flint Hill.” And then she thought to herself, “It is my destiny, I suppose.”

“ Good-by ! ” she cried, as they began to move; and, smitten by remorse for her secret impatience, she turned once more, and called out again, involuntarily, “ Good-by! ” And she waved her hand to the two little boys, besides.

The old wheels turned again on their roomy axles, and Chester elevated his shaggy and mournful head, and hammered the road with patient, nerveless footfalls. Mrs. Fayrewether followed with her eyes the two receding figures in the buggy; but at length she turned within, to see to her Indian pudding. Her sister had arrived from the neighboring town of Blueberry, that morning, and sat in the dining-room, at the farthest point from the stove, with limp bonnet-strings dangling on either side of her full, hot face.

“I'm glad,” said Mrs. Fayrewether, turning to her, “ that Miss Weston’s vacation has come. She ’s been dreadful homesick, Sophrony. When she first come, she used to stand at the schoolhouse windows; you know you can see the White Hills from there, sometimes; well, she used to stand there and look at those mountains just as if she was a-going to cry. Poor thing! I felt so sorry for her.”

“ That’s always the way, here,” said Sophrony, bitterly. “You Flint Hill folks never know how to make a stranger feel right to home. You 're not what I call really sociable.” And having removed this little stone from her heart, as it were, Sophrony allowed the current of human kindness to take its way. “ Did n’t she get over her loneliness at all?”

“ Oh, yes; that is to say, pretty nearly. I did think perhaps she might say she couldn’t come back, next term. Timothy — well, I don’t think he ’d like it much, if she was n’t to come back; though he don’t look so. I should sort of like her to stay along here, myself.” After this vague utterance Mrs. Fayrewether paused, fixing her eyes upon the pudding she had just drawn from the kettle with an inappreciative glance that betokened thoughtfulness, and a desire to dwell on the theme already broached. But her husband, who had several times shuffled uneasily in and out of the room, now reëntered.

“ Calc’late to wait for Timothy? ” he asked, putting on a pair of angular spectacles; then twitching them off again, and looking around the room as if in search of some very recondite object, but without encountering the eyes of either of the women.

This manœuvre was entirely successful, and the dinner was at once placed smoking on the table.

There was no conversation between the occupants of the buggy until they came in sight of the small, squat railroad station, half an hour’s drive from the farm-house. At this point Timothy’s eye again fell upon the forget-menots.

“ I suppose you ’re glad enough to get away from us,” he said. “ An’t you? ”

“ Of course — I am glad to be going home,” said Marnie.

“ Well, I don’t know but I should be, if I was in your place,” he observed.

And then be was overwhelmed by a despairing sense that he had said nothing of importance, and a dim fear that perhaps he never would say anything of importance.

Marnie alighted without his aid; and Timothy, taking down the hide-bound trunk, set it on the platform. Then he moved sleepily about the waiting-room, staring at one or two time-tables and other posters on its walls, while Marnie purchased her ticket. Suddenly he opened the door through which they had entered, and made as if he were going out immediately. He paused, however, on the threshold, and turned around with a certain air of hesitation.

“ See you again,” he said, in a casual tone, looking toward Marnie, in a half melancholy manner, but giving only an informal nod. And with that he was gone.

The young woman rose from where she had been sitting, and walked to a window which permitted a view of his receding back, as the buggy bore him away up-hill. What could it have been that made her feel as if this broad, inexpressive back of Timothy’s hinted some nameless failure or discouragement ? Before the young man disappeared from her sight, she saw him whip up Chester; and he seemed to perform even this trifling act with a noticeably despondent air. To be sure, he always whipped Chester in that way, but now . . . The whistle of the approaching locomotive recalled Marnie to herself. The stationmaster shut the ticket-window with a crash; ran out, in all suitable haste, to set the stopping-signal; and, in two or three minutes, returned amid a silence as profound as if nothing of this kind had ever happened. Marnie, however, carried the racket along with her, and was whirling northward to New Hampshire.

She had not been seated long in the train, with the warm breeze beating on her from the open window, before a slender and not very tall young man entered at the other end of the car, and was striding by her, when a side-glance arrested his attention, and he turned.

“ Good morning,” he said, lifting his hat.

“Mr. Grooseck! How do you do? ”

The person who bore this curious name was himself as peculiar. There were evidences of foreign extraction in the large nose and rather broad, flat eyelids and temples; but his cheeks were narrow and tinged with brown, and a natural intensity of expression made his face not unattractive. The seat in front of Marnie was vacant, and he threw himself into it easily, with one arm lying along the back.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “ Vacation has just begun. I had nearly forgotten that; a fellow does forget so soon about school-terms, Miss Weston.”

Marnie smiled.

“ But how does such a busy man as yourself happen to be flying around the country in this way? ” she asked.

“I’ve just been down to Boston, to give an order for hardware,” said Mr. Grooseck, looking very serious, and stroking his crescent mustache with one finger, carefully. “ And you 're going back to New Hampshire, I suppose? ” he continued. “ Do you return in the fall? ”

“I think so,” said Marnie.

“ Are these from Flint Hill? ” asked Grooseck, leaning over somewhat boldly, and picking up the forget-me-nots from her lap. In doing so, he encountered her eyes. Something in their expression first slightly alarmed, and then provoked him. “ Of course, they must have come from there,"he concluded, hastily. “ Great place for flowers. I used to drive there in spring for arbutus, when I lived at Hollowdale.”

“ Dear me, what could you have wanted of flowers, then? ” asked Marnie, with a touch of scornful petulance. Grooseck was perceptibly embarrassed by this random thrust, but she took no especial notice of his confusion. “ These won’t last me an hour,” she said, “if I don’t find some water for them. And I was going to press them.”

It was now Grooseck’s turn to suspect. And he glanced at her quickly, imagining that she had betrayed herself by this solicitude for her flowers. But he saw no tacit confession in her face, and, crushing within his breast a vague, rising jealousy, rose from his place with an impulse of gallantry.

“ I ’ll go and get the water-boy,” he said.

“ No, no, don’t. It’s so terribly hot. He will be coming through,” said Marnie.

The young hardware - merchant was flattered, and dropped softly back into his semi-reclining posture. When at length the water-boy made his appearance, Grooseck, with considerable show of magnificence, prevailed upon him to part with the property in one of his glasses; and, having partially filled this from the undignified but exceedingly hospitable spout of the youngster’s tin can, handed it to Marnie. His spirits rose, on the accomplishment of this little politeness, and he allowed himself a bolder range of thought in the conversation that ensued.

“ Why do you go back there?” he asked, speaking of the school, soon afterward, and expanding with the consciousness of an unfettered fancy.

“ I have no other way of getting a living,” answered Marnie, simply. “ And, besides, I am more interested in that than anything else.”

“But you don’t look like a person that would be satisfied with teaching school,” he persisted. “ I have an idea that you believe in woman’s rights; don’t you? I should think you would be for taking up something more —more masculine, so to speak.”

Marine’s cheeks flushed, and at the same time she stirred the ruffle at her throat with her finger, slightly, as if troubled by the heat.

“Why should believing in woman’s rights involve being more masculine? ” she retorted, quickly. “There, don’t let us talk of it, please. You have no reason to suppose that I believe in what people usually call woman’s rights.”

Grooseck was taken aback. He was silent for a moment, and applied one hand to his hair with a slow, brushing movement, as if he hoped by that means to soothe the hurt he had given Marnie.

“I only meant,” he said humbly, “ that you would be likely to look down on the — some of the usual occupations of women — teaching, for instance. I don’t know, — I even thought that you were n’t the kind just to marry and settle down, like the rest.”

“ Marrying is one of the usual occupations you thought I would look down upon, I suppose?” asked Marnie, with assumed innocence.

But immediately afterward she was sorry for the young man’s predicament; and, introducing a new topic, made herself so graciously attractive, that Martin Grooseck not only recovered from his momentary mortification, but was quite bewildered with delight; so that he was shocked and surprised when he found himself at his destination, and obliged to part with her. Just as he was getting off from the car, a young man mounted the steps whom Grooseck knew. It was an educational enthusiast, Walter Haliburton by name, who was already becoming well known in his special sphere of activity. Grooseck always felt an instinctive pity for him, as a man destined to labor continually without reward, though in himself a pleasant enough companion, and deserving of a better fortune. But now he scarcely noticed him, and only bowed by a habit of recognition; so absorbed was he in sanguine reverie. Haliburton, as it chanced, took his seat in the very car which Grooseck had left, though on the opposite side from where Marnie remained. He did not know her; but something in her form and aspect pleased him, and he had constantly to guard against looking too often toward her. This spontaneous interest was quickened, at the end of his journey, on his finding that it was also the end of her journey. Of all this, Grooseck of course remained unconscious; and he went about all day in an undisturbed trance of mingled melancholy and beatitude. His business did not possess its usual attractions for him, and he longed for an hour of solitude. Yet, that night, in the privacy and silence of his chamber, he apostrophized himself in a tone that reasserted the prudence he had for some hours been inclined to forget. “Martin,” he said aloud, standing before his glass; “be careful what you do! It is hardly safe to marry one of these women with a problem in their lives.”

II.

When the long sprays of the great elm had begun to yellow at the tips, as if, swayed to and fro by the wind, they had been dipped for an instant in the rising tide of autumn and then drawn out again from their bath of gold, the school-house was once more opened and filled with a busy and numerous life. But to Marnie, returning from her ten weeks’ vacation, there seemed a subtle and evasive change in all things hereabout which she could not account for wholly, but which lay deeper than in the changing color of the leaves. It might have been a partial return of the homesickness she had experienced before, on coming to Flint Hill. This, at least, would be the inference from her resumption, at this time, of that habit of gazing from the windows of the schoolroom, in unoccupied moments, toward the distant mountains of New Hampshire. At other times, as at recess, she found herself looking steadfastly down the short stretch of road that lost itself from her sight in the direction of Hollowdale. By and by, there came to be a strange fascination in this idle amusement. She began to take a personal interest in the various passers-by, and especially in those who came from the side of Hollowdale. For aught she knew, some one of them might have come straight from her far-off native hills, following the line of this highway all the time. At first, when a figure would appear at the farthest point of sight on the long course that the road made in that direction, she could hardly determine which way it was going; it would remain for a moment or two almost stationary, and then gradually advance. Then she would begin to wonder who this might be, who stepped so slowly in making his way for the first time into her experience. She tried also to picture to herself the circumstance of some one living on the turnpike,— just as she was living on it,—feeling that it was all very dull, and that nothing particular was going on; and then suddenly awaking to the perception that all sorts of people had been coming down the road, without her noticing it, and mixing themselves up with her life, until all at once she should prove to be the very centre of some hitherto unsuspected romance. Such a thing might very well happen, she thought — in a story.

“If we could only live in stories for a little while, now and then!” she exclaimed, to herself.

But there was another matter which troubled her. She had, naturally enough, made the acquaintance of young Haliburton, who had remained for a time in the village where her mother lived, and where her summer had been passed. Being an enthusiast, he was also, of course, a reformer; and was already far advanced in a project of establishing an academy where his new theories, or his modifications of old ones, were to be put to the test. Marnie had been thoroughly inducted into his schemes; and so brilliant and imposing did they appear to her, that she had come to feel rather ashamed of her little school at Flint Hill, with the empiric modes of instruction practiced there, and the ancient benches, on which successive generations had wrought a rich variety of carving, with much expenditure of devotional labor. Nor had she yet, though again in thorough sympathy with her little community, quite escaped this pursuing sense of the inadequacy with which the arrangements of her school were chargeable. One afternoon, on her way back to the farm-house, Timothy, who had just left his work in the fields, joined her, and they walked on together.

“ I am afraid it will never be a very famous school,” she said, in answer to a laudatory remark of his, in which he had declared the school was flourishing “famously.” “I don’t do nearly as well as I ought to do.”

“Well, all I know is that Pete and Harry are learning more than was ever taught me, at their age, and better, too. You ought to hear the way Pete talks about you!” Timothy’s face glowed, as he spoke.

“You mustn’t tell me, because I think I’m very partial to him, now. And you know anything like a compliment conquers a woman.”

“ Do you think so? ” asked Timothy, apparently much impressed by this statement. Then, by some hidden connection of ideas, he was led to ask if she were coming back another autumn. Perhaps he thought it expedient to defer until then something he had been about to say.

“I can’t possibly tell about that,” answered Marnie. “ It’s a whole year.”

“ Still, it’s pleasant around here; don’t you think so? Don’t you like it better than you did? ”

“ Yes, you ’ve all been very kind to me. But I don’t think I could stay another year. I ought to go away somewhere, and learn more. I don’t know enough to teach school — as it ought to be done.”

Timothy looked up at her. Her eyes were cast down, and she seemed weary. A vivid expression of vindication and reassurance enlivened his face, and he spoke out strongly. “ If you an’t satisfied,” he said, “ I don’t know who’s a right to be. But there ’s such a thing as getting too much learning. I’m a kind of a friend to a book, Miss Weston, you know. I respect it, even if I don’t know all that’s inside of it. But there is such a thing as getting too much book-learning.”

“ If you had tried teaching, Timothy, you might know better what I mean. And there are people that have such great ideas about education, it makes me almost ashamed of my school to think of them.”

“Perhaps you’d rather be in the high school over at Blueberry, then,” suggested Timothy, with ready local sensitiveness.

“ Oh no, I don’t mean that at all,” replied Marnie.

Timothy gave it up, and relapsed into silence. He grew more and more depressed, apparently, as they walked on. The early autumnal dusk gathered rapidly about them, and in its dubious light Marnie imagined that the young farmer’s ample face showed signs of secret sorrow which she ought to have observed before. There was an inclination to hollowness in the cheeks, she thought, and a wasted look under the eyes. She began to pity him, she scarcely knew why. That undefined apprehension of some failure in him, which she had once before felt, came up to her again. But when they entered the house, and drew within the circle of the evening lamp’s warm radiance, she was persuaded that nothing ill had befallen him, for he looked again as hale as ever, now. He was a little thin, perhaps, but that might have been because he had worked too hard in the sun.

The drowsy days of autumn stole away quietly. After a while, Marnie became aware of greater streaks and segments of lustrous blue visible through the irregular inclosures made by the winding and intersecting lines of the elm-tree’s limbs. And one morning, just as Marnie reached the school-house door, a horseman, coming along the road from Hollowdale, stopped to water his animal at the little pool, above which the ruinous trough now rose dry and decrepit, and found that the horse’s hoofs had first to break a thin shell of ice before the silent sweetness of the stream gurgled up into sight. As he approached, Marnie thought there was something familiar in his appearance. To be sure, it was Mr. Haliburton! In an instant, however, he had drawn near enough for her to see that it was not he, after all. She looked at his horse drinking, and watched him mount the little ridge. There was a pretty flush upon her cheeks, as if the autumn air had smitten them with unexpected sharpness; and thus she stood listening, until the sound of the now invisible horse’s gallop lost itself in a far-off, muffled rhythm. Winter followed speedily upon the rider’s heels.

On a certain Saturday, some two months later, little Pete Fayrewether was engaged in play, on a patch-work rug in one corner of the sitting-room. His mother was at work on a short pair of trousers that dangled helplessly over her lap, but she conversed at the same time with her son Timothy, in low tones. At length the heightened pitch of Timothy’s voice attracted Pete’s notice.

“I tell you it an’t any use, mother,” he was saying. “ She does n’t like the place. She’s always talking about going away; and I ” —

The door of the room was just then opened, and Marnie came in, looking somewhat paler than formerly. Timothy suddenly broke off what he was saying, and appeared very much confused. He put his hands in his pockets and showed a tendency to reel about gently on the heels of his boots without, however, actually doing so. Pete had sometimes noticed, before, that grown people were apt to be thrown into embarrassment by the unexpected entrance of some additional person into their company. But, never having experienced this embarrassment himself, he was at a loss to account for it. He was soon diverted from this point, however, by the discovery that Marnie was going to see little Nettie, one of his schoolfriends, who had fallen sick. Pete thought he would like to send her something, and finally hit upon a marble, as the most precious token of his affection which could be found. But when Marnie had taken it, it looked so much rounder and smoother and more beautifully colored than when he had held it, that he repented of his generosity, and resumed his right to the precious plaything. The pale school-mistress smiled at this exhibition of masculine inconstancy, and went out.

“ It ’ll do her good to be out-of-doors,” said Timothy to his mother, when they were left alone. “ She’s getting to look almost sickly, working so much, and on Saturdays, too.”

“ Well, that an’t the fault of the place, any way,” said the matron, catching at her needle, and beginning to stitch sharply at the short trousers.

Timothy looked at her in slow surprise. But she did not meet his glance. The young man left the room, and with loud, inattentive stampings went along the passageway, to see to his father’s cattle in the barn.

At Christmas, Marnie returned to New Hampshire for a week. The village seemed strangely sad and quiet; and she wondered, for the first time, how her mother could endure her life there alone. In the summer it had been quite gay, with friends and strangers; but many of these were now gone. Mr. Haliburton was not there either, from whom she might otherwise have gained something more of that educational philosophy for which she still longed very often, notwithstanding its disturbing influence upon her.

“ I think he was to lecture in Blueberry, this week,” said Mrs. Weston, pulling a letter out of her pocket. “ He has been very kind about writing to me, and lets me know all that he’s doing. Yes,” she went on, studying the manuscript, “ it is this very week! Only to think that you might have heard him, if you had stayed down at Flint Hill.”

The schoolmistress came close to her mother, and flung her arms around her. The letter from Mr. Haliburton, which the good lady was still holding, was sadly crushed, and quite forced out of sight, in the loving stress of the embraces that followed.

“ You dear old thing! ” cried Marnie. “ I never loved you before as I do now. And do you think I would have stayed there for anything, when I knew my mother had been waiting here a whole quarter to see me? ”

And then, as she thought of Mr. Haliburton again, Marnie felt that she was half angry with him, for having been the cause of even this suspicion that she might prove unfaithful to her mother.

When she returned to Flint Hill, she learned that Mr. Haliburton had driven over from Blueberry, before his lecture, with a ticket for her use. Not finding her there, he had left it at the disposal of the Fayrewethers. But the farmer’s wife hastened to point it out, with a sort of vindictive officiousness, as it lay primly on Marine’s little bedroom table. The school-mistress took up the slip of cardboard mechanically, and looked at it. But the bare black words, “ Admit One,” seemed so to emphasize the insidious weariness which had been creeping into her life since the autumn, that she was insensibly cast down by it. She paced absently about her room, and, bethinking her of an old piano belonging to a neighbor at home, on which she had once been used to play, wished it were now at hand, that she might dispel, with some simple harmony, the momentary jarring trouble that beset her heart.

III.

At length the dull stretch of latter winter was left behind. April came; the snows gradually disappeared, and the road from school to farm became a sluggish, semi-solid river of mud. By the middle of May, however, the ice of Flint Pond had snapped asunder its heavy plates; and the rivulet burrowed beneath the road again, and flashed out on the south, with a more than ever exquisite tinkling cadence in its rippling. Something in the return of spring may have stirred an old memory in Timothy, for one day he asked Marnie whether she had kept the forget-me-nots she had taken with her, the summer before, from the brook-side under the elm.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered. “I kept them and pressed them when I got home.”

“ But how did you keep them fresh, on the way? ”

And so Marnie had to tell him the little incident of her meeting with Mr. Grooseck, and his attention. Timothy appeared strangely moved; but he did not speak with her further, then. He went off to his own room. Something oppressed him; he became suddenly conscious of a weight in his bosom, and it seemed as if this must have been there for a long time without his observing it, — almost ever since that day when Marnie had ridden beside him, with the flowers in her hand. It was an unusual thing for him to enter his own room during the day; for changes of dress and ablutions were seldom thought of, after the morning. But now he actually sat down, for a moment, in its chambered silence, allowing his eyes to become vacant, and his ears to lose their alertness. The vacant eyes, however, soon contracted and sharpened their gaze again, and he became conscious of his Bible lying on a painted shelf opposite to him. He rose with a long step toward it, and, taking hold of it, dropped back into his chair, with the book on his knees. He had determined that the present crisis was one which demanded that hap-hazard resort to the Scripture of which he knew people often made use in their troubles. The passage upon which he chanced was this: “ But we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience.” He did not read on, because he had often heard the remainder of the verse, and was content with these opening words, the bearing of which upon his own life had never been very direct or powerful before. Closing the book, he arose and went out of the house. Everything seemed strange to him, — the old, roomy barn, the wellknown fields. During those moments in his room, he had almost forgotten that it was spring, and that there was sowing to be done. He could not help wondering whether this load would ever leave his heart ; whether the scene around him would ever resume its wonted aspect of perfect familiarity. No, he was nearly sure that there would always be a something slightly different about it, hereafter. Then he found himself repeating that passage from the Bible, and supplying a clause or two from memory: “ that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.” Then again he stopped; he could not remember the ending of the sentence. But that word “hope” seemed fine; it restored his failing sense of spring.

Meanwhile, his question had reminded Marnie that she had not once looked at the pressed forget-me-nots, since her return. She went to her room and searched for the book of poems in which she remembered laying them. She had studied so closely, all winter, that she had not once sought out the volume, since her return to Flint Hill. And now she could find it nowhere. A momentary suspicion crossed her mind, excited by Timothy’s question concerning the flowers. But she dismissed it almost immediately; and it was only a week later that a letter came from her mother, in which she mentioned having found the missing book, where Marnie had inadvertently left it on her departure in the autumn. “ I think there were some flowers pressed in it,” she went on to say, in the letter; “ but, if there were, they dropped out and were lost. Now I come to think of it, though, there may not have been any; for I remember Mr. Haliburton was making a call, when I first picked up the book, and he could n’t find anything on the floor, although I had thought I saw something fall. And he has sharper eyes than mine.” This news may not have made the disappearance of the flowers any clearer in Marnie’s mind. At all events, she neither communicated it, nor the fact of her loss, to the farmer’s son.

Presently greenness began in the wet and odorous woods, and traffic was resumed upon the highway, now no longer covered with snow; and the old fascination of expectancy returned upon Marnie, as she studied its narrowing sweep to the northwest, — although a strange, drowsy, and half-sad contentment came over her, likewise.

One day, when she had turned the droning little populace of the benches out into the road for their recess, she watched Pete Fayrewether, with a boyfriend, drawing two of the school-girls up - hill in a tiny cart, to a bower of fresh shrubs and saplings which they had that morning erected. There the two young maiden divinities were enshrined, and remained sitting in an embarrassment of idleness, while the boys ran to and from the bower, and all four chattered in and about their nest like a quartette of happy birds. Marnie could not avoid wondering what might come of the little incident hereafter; whether the modest bower would bloom again in the larger proportions of home, over the heads of each young pair, or whether all would be forgotten when once its leaves should wither and fall. Nettie was fond of her books: perhaps she, too, would become a lonely district teacher, and, like Marnie herself, go forth to dream and drudge her days away among strangers. But it was time to close the recess. Marnie turned to go in. At this moment she heard a step behind her.

“How do you do?” said some one whom she could not see.

It was Haliburton. He had approached from the curve toward Hollowdale, and, as he took off his hat, partly in greeting, partly to free his forehead, moisture was visible on his brow, and his cheeks were bright with new, clear color, steady but also swiftly pulsing.

Marnie inclined her head to him, in welcome.

“I was at Hollowdale for a time,” he said, “and thought I would walk down and make you a call.”

“ Recess is just over,” she answered, with something of timidity in her manner.

“ Could n’t I see you afterward, then? I wanted to speak to you particularly. It ’s the old subject, education — with a new face. I ’m going to build my model academy.”

She looked up at him, joyfully.

“ Morning school will be over at twelve,” she said.

“ But you will want dinner, then.”

“ Perhaps,” she responded, hesitatingly, “ if you were going to be here, we could talk of it on the way to the house. ”

“ Oh,” said Walter, shortly. “ Yes; I will be here,” he added.

Their glances did not meet again. Marnie went within, and the rapid bell on her desk shook out its shrill summons on the air a moment afterward. Haliburton went over to the spot where the brook poured into the trough, and, stooping over this, took a deep draught of its vernal fullness. “If I could only slake this other thirst of mine at the same source! ” he said to himself. Then he betook himself to the deserted bower of twisted boughs, and sat looking at the elm, the trough, and the school-house. Marnie, meantime, fancied him somewhere without, smiling, she could only hope in pity and not in disdain, upon her shabby little school. But there was nothing either of pity or disdain in his face; it was a very different expression from either of these. At last he drew from his pocket a volume of poetry, and began reading. When, after the lapse of more than an hour, the pent-up life of the school-room burst forth again, he went down to meet Marnie, with the book in his hand.

“ Can’t we go through the woods? ” he asked.

“ I believe there is a sort of path through them,” she replied.

In a moment, they had disappeared within the viridescent maze of the forest. They entered, through an arch of lighter foliage, into an alley of pines farther on, and a shaft of sunlight, striking on the grass at their feet, laid an elusive threshold there of greening gold. But before they passed out of sight from the road, Walter showed Marnie the book of poems he had been reading. “ I came to render up something that belongs to you,” he said.

When the dinner stood arrayed on farmer Fayrewether’s table, Marnie had not appeared. Like many other woodpaths, that which she had followed had only brought her back again to the starting-point. Yet there was a difference in her situation, too. Mr. Haliburton stood there with her, just as before their entrance into the wood. And yet, again, there was a difference.

“ And so I read their story wrong? ” said the young man, glancing at a cluster of pressed forget-me-nots in his hand. “ And they did not mean that there was something here which enchained your heart to this spot? ”

“ I can’t tell, quite,” said Marnie. “ No one will ever know exactly what they meant, at first. But it seems that, after all, they were to be the cause of keeping me here.”

Young Haliburton took the hand of his newly-betrothed, and kissed it. The hidden significance of the dried blossoms was, apparently, clear enough to him. But it might have added another element of wonder to the deep surprise of his new happiness, had he known that these little forget-me-nots had taken root, while yet in their freshest bloom, in two other hearts, to which they brought no such sweet fruitage as to his. The first whose eyes fell on them, after they had been plucked, bore away their beauty, and treasured it secretly within himself. The second stretched his hand out boldly, and even held them in his fingers; but, after all, he had done no more than to furnish the means of preserving them for a third person. Into Haliburton’s possession they had fallen, at last, as if by a special disposition of fate; and it had remained for him to fill their withered forms with the new life of his love, until they bloomed again into unfading sweetness.

It was several days after this walk in the wood that a light trotting-sulky, driven at great speed, and bending springily under the weight of a slender young man, approached the Fayrewether farm from the school-house ridge. The sulky halted at the gate, and Mr. Grooseck, leaping down, asked for Marnie at the door. She came to the sitting-room, and found the young man standing, in a light overcoat, with one hand on the table, and looking toward the door as she entered. His manner was eager and energetic.

“I wanted to see you very much,” he began; “and as I had business in the neighborhood ” —

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Grooseck,” said Marnie, She seated herself, but the young merchant remained standing.

“ I don’t know,” he resumed, “ whether you remember our conversation in the cars, almost a year ago. No, of course, I don’t suppose you do. But I never forgot it. And that is what I came to speak about.”

“ I remember,” said Marnie.

“ Well, I think I made a fool of myself. You know what I said — something about your not wanting to — that is, something about women’s rights. You do remember? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Well, I don’t think so, now. I’ve changed my mind. That is — in point of fact, Miss Weston, I was going to ask you to — to ” —

“ I am afraid I know, Mr. Grooseck, what it is,” said Marnie, rising quietly. “You know my friend Mr. Haliburton, I think.”

“ You are ” — Here Mr. Grooseck faltered.

“Yes; I am engaged to him.”

The young hardware-merchant took a step backward, and removed his hand from the table, making no immediate attempt to conceal his embarrassment. Then, in a moment, a deeper candor than had hitherto been apparent made itself felt in his face. It was as if an incredibly light gauze had been lifted from before his features. He held out his hand; and Marnie took it, kindly though not very firmly.

“ You have my best wishes, Miss “Weston.” he said. “ I am sorry I made it so awkward for you.”

He opened the door. “ Good-by,” he said, and went out. Immediately the sulky skimmed off over the road again, and disappeared beyond the ridge by the elm. Grooseck had a business engagement at Hollowdale; he had originally planned to allow himself only twenty minutes for the interview with Marnie.

Timothy had seen the young man arriving, and his heart had throbbed so, that for an instant he became conscious of its beating. When the sulky skimmed off again, after that brief interview (like a daddy-long-legs, with the driver poised in its centre for the spider’s body), his face brightened, and he began to hope. Still, his bosom remained overweighted, and he could not dissuade himself at once from the now familiar feeling that he was not at home in these surroundings. Nor did the fields ever regain their old aspect, to him. That evening, the engagement of Marnie to Haliburton was clearly announced to the Fayrewether family.

Mrs. Weston had already given her consent by letter, and indeed was lost in delight at the prospect of going to live with her daughter and son-in-law at the famous new academy in which the artful Haliburton had so deeply interested her; though sister Sophrony, when she heard of the affair, wondered that any one who had experienced the cold hospitality of Flint Hill should consent to marry a man whose avowed intention it was to establish himself in that place.

“ But it’s no more than fair,” protested the old farmer, “ that he should give us an academy, if he robs us of our schoolma’am.”

In truth, farmer Fayrewether was much elated at the prospect of this addition to the distinguishing features of Flint Hill. He had already discussed with Haliburton the site of the new edifice. It was to be placed a little farther back from the road than the present school-house — a short distance along the wood-path. The farmer had advocated a slightly different situation; but Haliburton would not approve it, having some sentimental superstition, in fact, as to the spot he had chosen. But Mrs. Fayrewether displayed no joy in these details.

“ Next month they begin to build,” said the farmer.

“ There now, Timothy,” exclaimed the mother, pushed to utterance by this; “ you see how much good it did to make up your mind, beforehand, that she would n’t be contented here! ”

Timothy made no reply; but he smiled, slowly. The secret spring of humor within him had evidently been touched anew by the late events. As usual, the smile was confined to one side of his mouth, but there was a new look of whimsical puzzlement in his face, at the same time. During subsequent years he often smiled in this way. But he never married.

G. P. Lathrop.