as she was before Roger Tabor and she had
departed out of Canaan. She had lived her girlhood only upon their
borderland, with no intimates save her grandfather and Joe; and she
returned to her native town "a revelation and a dream," as young Mr.
Bradbury told his incredulous grandmother that night.

The conversation of the gallants consisted, for the greater part, of
witticisms at one another's expense, which, though evoked for Ariel's
benefit (all eyes furtively reverting to her as each shaft was loosed),
she found more or less enigmatical. The young men, however, laughed at
each other loudly, and seemed content if now and then she smiled. "You
must be frightfully ennuied with all this," Eugene said to her. "You
see how provincial we still are."

She did not answer; she had not heard him. The shadows were stretching
themselves over the grass, long and attenuated; the sunlight upon the
trees and houses was like a thin, rosy pigment; black birds were
calling each other home to beech and elm; and Ariel's eyes were fixed
upon the western distance of the street where gold-dust was beginning
to quiver in the air. She did not hear Eugene, but she started, a
moment later, when the name "Joe Louden" was pronounced by a young man,
the poetic Bradbury, on the step below Eugene. Some one immediately
said "'SH!" But she leaned over and addressed Mr. Bradbury, who, shut
out, not only from the group about her, but from the other centring
upon Miss Pike, as well, was holding a private conversation with a
friend in like misfortune.

"What were you saying of Mr. Louden?" she asked, smiling down upon the
young man. (It was this smile which inspired his description of her as
"a revelation and a dream.")

"Oh, nothing particular," was his embarrassed reply. "I only mentioned
I'd heard there was some talk among the--" He paused awkwardly,
remembering that Ariel had walked with Joseph Louden in the face of
Canaan that very day. "That is, I mean to say, there's some talk of his
running for Mayor."

"WHAT?"

There was a general exclamation, followed by an uncomfortable moment or
two of silence. No one present was unaware of that noon walk, though
there was prevalent a pleasing notion that it would not happen again,
founded on the idea that Ariel, having only arrived the previous
evening, had probably met Joe on the street by accident, and,
remembering him as a playmate of her childhood and uninformed as to his
reputation, had