a laughing glance toward her, and looked down quickly at his
clasp-knife and the stick he was whittling. It was growing very
slender now.

Cynthia's serious face relaxed its gravity. "Ye air foolish, Jacob,"
she said, laughing. After stringing on another pepper-pod with great
deliberation, she continued: "Ef I war a-studyin' 'bout a-gittin'
married, thar ain't nobody round 'bout hyar ez I'd hev." And she added
another pod to the flaming red string, so bright against the yellow of
her dress.

That stick could not long escape annihilation. The clasp-knife moved
vigorously through its fibres, and accented certain arbitrary clauses
in its owner's retort. "Ye talk like," he said, his face as
monotonous in its expression as if every line were cut in marble--"ye
talk like--ye thought ez how I--war a-goin' ter ax ye--ter marry me. I
ain't though, nuther."

The stick was a shaving. It fell among the weeds. The young hunter
shut his clasp-knife with a snap, shouldered his gun, and without a
word of adieu on either side the conference terminated, and he walked
off down the sandy road.

Cynthia stood watching him until the laurel-bushes hid him from sight;
then sliding from the door-frame to the step, she sat motionless, a
bright-hued mass of yellow draperies and red peppers, her slumberous
deep eyes resting on the leaves that had closed upon him.

She was the central figure of a still landscape. The mid-day sunshine
fell in broad effulgence upon it; the homely, dun-colored shadows had
been running away all the morning, as if shirking the contrast with
the splendors of the golden light, until nothing was left of them
except a dark circle beneath the wide-spreading trees. No breath of
wind stirred the leaves, or rippled the surface of the little pond.
The lethargy of the hour had descended even upon the towering
pine-trees, growing on the precipitous slope of the mountain, and
showing their topmost plumes just above the frowning, gray
crag--their melancholy song was hushed. The silent masses of dazzling
white clouds were poised motionless in the ambient air, high above the
valley and the misty expanse of the distant, wooded ranges.

A lazy, lazy day, and very, very warm. The birds had much ado to find
sheltering shady nooks where they might escape the glare and the heat;
their gay carols were out of season, and they blinked and nodded under
their leafy umbrellas, and fanned themselves with their wings, and
twittered disappro