se you never thought of me. Perhaps I should not have known
you if you had changed a great deal--as I have!"

He started, leaning back from her.

"Ah!" she laughed. "That's it! That funny little twist of the head
you always had, like a--like a--well, you know I must have told you a
thousand times that it was like a nice friendly puppy; so why shouldn't
I say so now? And your eyebrows! When you look like that, nobody
could ever forget you, Joe!"

He rose from the log, and the mongrel leaped upon him uproariously,
thinking they were to go home, belike to food.

The lady laughed again. "Don't let him spoil my parasol. And I must
warn you now: Never, never TREAD ON MY SKIRT! I'm very irritable
about such things!"

He had taken three or four uncertain backward steps from her. She sat
before him, radiant with laughter, the loveliest creature he had ever
seen; but between him and this charming vision there swept, through the
warm, scented June air, a veil of snow like a driven fog, and, half
obscured in the heart of it, a young girl stood, knee-deep in a drift
piled against an old picket gate, her black water-proof and shabby
skirt flapping in the blizzard like torn sails, one of her hands
out-stretched toward him, her startled eyes fixed on his.

"And, oh, how like you," said the lady; "how like you and nobody else
in the world, Joe, to have a yellow dog!"

"ARIEL TABOR!"

His lips formed the words without sound.

"Isn't it about time?" she said. "Are strange ladies in the HABIT of
descending from trains to take you home?"

Once, upon a white morning long ago, the sensational progress of a
certain youth up Main Street had stirred Canaan. But that day was as
nothing to this. Mr. Bantry had left temporary paralysis in his wake;
but in the case of the two young people who passed slowly along the
street to-day it was petrifaction, which seemingly threatened in
several instances (most notably that of Mr. Arp) to become permanent.

The lower portion of the street, lined with three and four story
buildings of brick and stone, rather grim and hot facades under the
mid-day sun, afforded little shade to the church-comers, who were
working homeward in processional little groups and clumps, none walking
fast, though none with the appearance of great leisure, since neither
rate of progress would have been esteemed befitting the day. The
growth of Canaan, steady, though never startling, had left almost all
of