ticks for the
youths who hovered in the rear.

The minister had expressed a keen desire to hear the rare notes of
the hermit thrush; and this romantic quest led them deep into the
forest. The girl paused at last on the brink of a pool, where they
could see the shadowy forms of brook trout gliding through the clear,
cold water.

"If we are quiet and listen," she told him, "I think we shall hear
the hermit."

On a carpet of moss, thicker and softer than a deep-piled rug, they
sat down. Not a sound broke the stillness but the gurgle of water and
the soft soughing of the wind through great tree tops. The minister
bared his head, as if aware of the holy spirit of solitude in the
place. Neither spoke nor stirred; but the girl's heart beat loud--so
loud she feared he might hear, and drew her little cape closer above
her breast. Then all at once, ringing down the somber aisles of the
forest came the song of the solitary bird, exquisite, lonely, filled
with an indescribable, yearning sweetness. The man's eloquent eyes
met her own in a long look.

"Wonderful!" he murmured.

His hand sought and closed upon hers for an instant. Then without
further speech they returned to the picnickers. Someone--she thought
it was Joyce Fulsom--snapped the joyous group at the moment of the
departure. It had been a week later, that he had written the words
"Lest we forget"--with a look and smile which set the girl's pulses
fluttering. But that was in June. Now it was September. Fanny,
crouched by the window where Lydia Orr had been that afternoon,
stared coldly at the picture. It was downright silly to have carried
it about with her. She had lost it somewhere--pulling out her
handkerchief, perhaps. Had Lydia Orr found and brought it back? She
ardently wished she knew; but in the meanwhile--

She tore the picture deliberately across, thereby accomplishing
unhindered what Wesley Elliot had attempted several days before; then
she burned the fragments in the quick spurt of a lighted match....
Lest we forget, indeed!

Chapter XVII

The day after the sewing society Ellen Dix went up to her room, after
hurriedly washing the dinner dishes. It was still hot, but a vague
haze had crept across the brazen sky since morning. Ellen's room
looked out into cool green depths of trees, so that on a cloudy day
it was almost too dark to examine the contents of the closet opposite
its two east windows.

It was a pretty room, freshly papered and pa