upper end of the valley; Iran. But where was she? Was it true that we think people into being? She was here, surely. Why, yes; there was the print in the grass where some one had been sitting, where I sat at that moment, baffled and bewildered. Perhaps she had not been there. I looked about. Something shone in the grass. I picked it up with a strange sensation; it was a hairpin, and warm, as if it had just fallen from the hair. Fool! it might be warm from the sun, and have lain there long. No; it showed no rust. I put it in my pocket. I rose, and half aimlessly followed the way I thought I had seen her take toward a thick hedge of trees and undergrowth that covered a steep ascent from the valley. I put aside the foliage with my hands,

hill, cross the valley; at the end of the valley is a pond, and beyond a marsh, and there you shall find marsh-mallows. You shall know them by their flaunting and their bright pink color. They are as large as your hand. How restless you are! Good-by! Good luck!"

It was as if Sylvester's parting blessing had suddenly taken effect, for as I came to the highest point of ground, and looked down to the valley, what should I see! Not marsh-mallows; no; if I was not dreaming, I saw seated amid the tall grasses down in the valley a young girl in a riding-habit. She had taken off her hat, held her whip in her hand, and sat dreamily looking up to where I stood. Surely she must have seen me, as I stood relieved against rocks and sky, below me the sloping ground and the browsing sheep. Surely she must have seen me. She seemed to start; she half rose; she sat down again; she put on her little beaver hat; she gathered up the folds of her skirt in her hand; and she walked away.

I made all haste to the spot; the frightened sheep fled before my rapid progress. I vaulted the stone wall that hedged the

and was about to begin my climbing through briers and over rocks, when I saw something white at my feet. I picked it up; it was a lady's handkerchief-a little gauzy thing of cambric, with a scalloped border, but neither name nor initial. A vague odor as of wild roses clung about it. I remembered the same before about a veil of hers. But was I sure that no other lady dropped wild roses in the drawer of her bureau, or laid them in her handkerchief sachet? Yet with feverish haste I hurried on.

A woman must have been very active to climb this. An instant I paused to take breath when I had reached the top. I looked about, half expecting to see her seated near, resting after her exertions. There was no one in sight. Now which way had she gone? To my left lay an apple orchard, and beyond I knew was a road, where horses might be waiting; to the right the farm-yard. The orchard was most probable. I took the orchard, and I was right. Had she laid a trail for me all the way? How rapidly she must have walked or run! Did she fear pursuit? I vaulted the orchard wall. I was on the road, but the button wood-trees that made a hedge on the other side must, with the undergrowth of blackberry vines and wild-rose bushes, have hidden me from sight. I did not seem to attract the attention of a lady and gentleman who were not far from me. The gentleman supported her with his arm, and fanned her with his hat. I seemed paralyzed. A mist swam before my eyes. When I look ed again, I saw that the man was her brother. In my excitement I had failed to notice this important fact. He was saying: "I told you, my dear, that that climb was too much for you. Are you better now? Do you think that you can ride home?"

I stood there confused. Was it the climb that had made her faint? Was it, perhaps, her surprise at seeing me? Dared I think so? Now what should I do? Her brother was mounting her upon her horse. He gave her the reins; he re-assured her, patting her knee caressingly. What aggravating creatures brothers are! Should I step forward and speak? What should I say? How would she receive me? Should I present her handkerchief; and would she bend forward with a graceful coolness and say, "You are very good; I am sorry to have troubled you"? What, indeed, should I gain, and her brother

there to watch us both, with the superior right to take her away at any moment? In a moment it would be too late. Her brother had jumped into his saddle, and they rode away.

I climbed the orchard wall, and sat down under the trees in no amiable mood. A mild, contented cow grazed amid the flecking lights and shadows. How we worry and struggle through life, with nature perpetually setting us the example of simple obedience! Yet there are storms and volcanoes too, the passions of nature; but they have a certain directness; they do nothing equivalent to hiding by orchard walls, to acting unfelt indifference. No doubt I was a fool.

Sylvester and I sat about on the rocks behind the little farm-house till a late hour that evening, talking over old times, and when I went to my room I sat up still later, looking at two little things that I took from my pocket, feeling as if some inspiration would come to me as to the best way to use the chance that had dropped them into my hands. But even at breakfast the next morning, when I broke it to Sylvester that I meant to leave him that afternoon, I had no very definite idea of what I meant to do next.

66

'What!" said Sylvester, "leave the Happy Hunting Ground! Have I not ceaselessly entertained you with stores of wisdom? Have we not wandered about like a second Virgil and Dante in a latterday Paradiso ? What further inducements can I offer you? Unsensitive creature! what land shall you find equal to this?"

"Ah! my dear Sylvester, it is true that we have wandered like Virgil and Dante, and you have poured your stores of wisdom into my lap, as it were, with a lavish generosity. I find no fault with you, nor with your Paradiso in itself; but Dante does not find his Beatrice here. There is no Beatrice in the orchards of your Happy Hunting Ground; your rocks are barren, and your sea is sad. 'Not here! not here!' is their continual cry."

"No, indeed," said Sylvester. "I find her in every sunrise and sunset, in the shadows of every orchard and the foam of every wave, in the clematis and the water-lilies, in the honeysuckle and the bees, in the butterflies and the wild roses, in the morning-glories and the lark."

"Now speaks the artist and the poet. I am but an ordinary mortal, and the morn

Fate favored Sylvester's amiable wish to detain me. The gray sky of that morning grew darker and darker, and soon the rain drove us in doors, where we filled our landlady's best room with smoke, stretched our lengths in turn on her horse-hair sofa, and composed a jocose catalogue of the chromos that decorated her walls.

The storm grew in force till by night we were in our little farm-house as in a ship at sea, shaken and tossed, and the wind's chromatic scale waked all the melancholy I had been joking into obscurity that day. At dawn it cleared, and I came with a sudden waking upon the finest sunrise the most artistic soul could have imagined. I got out of bed immediately, and out of doors in as brief a span of time as a respect for the proprieties permitted. I found Sylvester before me,

hedged the valley, and only waiting for me in order to climb over its entire face.

The magnificent view lured us on till we found to our astonishment that we had completed the whole distance of the ridge, stone walls and all, for the strange natives of the surrounding country even take their walls to the top of the rocks, uncontent with checking the land with them. The sea was white with foam, and though the ships might have been swept clean from its surface by the night's hurricane, there they were in the morning light, with bellying sails dashing gayly along. But those were the survivors. The land had a peculiar brilliancy and freshness, the moss-incrusted rocks looking like masses of some stone of the family of malachite, and the streams in the meadows full, and glancing and gleaming. In the high wind a hat was of doubt

ful use or ornament, and we carried them like sun-shields in our hands, as a Chinaman carries a fan.

I went away that morning, Sylvester saying, "If you must go, my dear boy, you must. An old fellow like myself finds at fifty that it is best to stay in one place a good deal. But you must take something with you for a souvenir of my Happy Hunting Ground." He looked through his sketch-book, and tore out a leaf. "Here is a sort of pot-pourri-a spider I found once keeping the gate of that side of the farm that leads to the descent into the valley; a little view of the pond up beyond the meadows; a water-lily from the pond below the marsh at the end of the valley; and a sketch of a lady I found reading one day in that little nook in the big rocks on the hill. They are trifles, but will serve for a keepsake. Good-by; God bless you, dear boy!"

I spent some hours at my hotel in making an elaborate toilet. I looked quite unlike Dante, when all was done, but, like him, I sought my Beatrice.

A large company of ladies in charming costumes made more beautiful the sunny afternoon on the lawn of a fine countryseat, where they had set up a target, at which they were shooting arrows.

At the moment of my approach it was my Beatrice was shooting. Her arrow, with that thud grateful to the archer's ear, buried itself deep in the bull's-eye. A mingled cry of feminine voices gave the applause. She turned her head to the left as she plucked another arrow from the quiver. A pause. She handed her bow to a young man who stood near. They seemed to be talking. She pulled

off her glove, took the bow again, aimed deliberately, and again hit the bull's-eye. She walked away to a garden seat, whereI speedily presented myself.

She looked up in answer to my silent. bow, and smiled faintly. She was very pale. I found words to say, presently: "You go straight to the mark. I wish I understood the art as well."

She answered nothing, but playing with an arrow she held between her hands, broke it. Several people came up to congratulate her upon her success. She said that she was tired, and should shoot no more that day.

I moved away to speak to other people, and a little later we were all asked to go into the house for a four-o'clock cup of tea. I stood in the doorway as she passed in. She looked up at me, blushing, and said: "It takes a little practice. One can't be sure to do it the first time."

The crowd swept between us, and I had no moment alone with her again.

I called the next morning. The servant told me that she had a bad headache, and was confined to her room. I called again the next morning, having sent her flowers the night before. There were trunks in the hall. The family were returning to town. She had preceded them, with her brother and a maid, to put the town house in readiness to receive them. No note, no word, for me. It looked like an intended retreat.

"And so," I said, having reached this. point in my story, "here I am, you see, Cynthia, rather outwitted by the enemy." "Do you mean to leave it there?" said Cynthia.

"I don't know," I answered.