he country of Moab."

[Illustration: (Turned her pretty head aside and blushed.)]

It seems Boaz had never seen her before, although her fame had reached
his ears, and he spoke to her softly and kindly, praised her for her
devotion to her mother-in-law (you see that captured his fancy and
admiration, as it has every one's since), and then she smiled and
thanked him very ardently, and then the wily widow turned her pretty
head aside and blushed. And Boaz, who had never heard the advice to
"beware of the vidders," was taken in and done for in that one short
interview. He hung around the fields, deserted the city, cared naught
for its pleasures, forgot the dames of high degree, and lingered for
hours among the reapers to catch a glance from her dark eye, or a
smile from her ruby lips, and I suppose they sometimes rested in the
shade and talked sweet nonsense, or sat in the intoxicating silence
when love speaks unutterable things to the heart alone, and the "old
sweet story was told again" in the harvest field near Bethlehem.

"Boaz commanded his young men saying, Let her glean even among the
sheaves, and reproach her not: And let fall also some of the handfuls
of purpose for her, and leave them, and rebuke her not."

Having alighted upon an easy task, Ruth knew it. "So she kept fast by
the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of
wheat harvest: and dwelt with her mother-in-law."

And yet it seems the gentleman did not propose. So Naomi and Ruth
talked it over together, for by this time his infatuation was the talk
of the city, and sentimental, romantic old Naomi, who must have been a
charming woman in her day, was interested in this love affair. For no
matter how old a woman or man may be, the perennial stream of love and
sentiment flows on in the heart, although hid 'neath white hairs and
wrinkles, and bound by the wintry shackles of age and custom; still it
is there, and often breaks the icy barriers of the years and betrays
itself by a late marriage, or in the matchmaking proclivities of all
elderly women.

And Naomi gave Ruth some instructions which we blush to think of, but
she followed them implicitly. And the middle-aged Boaz was caught. We
suppose he was forty-five or fifty from the fact that he called Ruth
"my daughter," and commended her because she didn't run after the
gilded youths of society, but preferred him above them all. And Boaz
and Ruth were married, and like most marriages b