at
length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed each other as
chance explorers in new lands, and made the whole country-side ring with
the noise of their congratulations. There was as much excitement and
healthy stirring of the blood in it as in the Fourth of July, and
perhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it in dumb show from the
distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he were a man. At night there
were great stories of achievement told by the cavernous fireplace;
great latitude was permitted in the estimation of the size of particular
drifts, but never any agreement was reached as to the "depth on a
level." I have observed since that people are quite as apt to agree upon
the marvelous and the exceptional as upon simple facts.

V

By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing a letter
to Herbert,--writing it, literally, on her knees, transforming thus the
simple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville says that it is bad for
her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes. He begins to doubt
the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm about absence conquering
love.

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent,
as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable. Mandeville
begins to wish he were in New South Wales.

I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the Young
Lady,--obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which get
into print always are,--not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, but to show
how the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected by the master
passion. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in the interests
of science one has no right to make an autopsy of two loving hearts,
especially when they are suffering under a late attack of the one
agreeable epidemic.

All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less in his
extravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he has something of
the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would even like to show the
sincerity of his devotion by some piece of open heroism. Why should he
conceal a discovery which has transformed the world to him, a secret
which explains all the mysteries of nature and humanity? He is in that
ecstasy of mind which prompts those who were never orators before to
rise in an experience-meeting and pour out a flood of feeling in the
tritest language and the most conventional terms. I am not sure that
Herbe