hair? You could
see her heart beat with very love of living. She was of the woods, like a
dryad. Had the prizes been of my choosing, she should have had a gift more
poetical than a guinea."

Haward opened the coach door, and stood gravely aside while she entered
the vehicle and took her seat, depositing her flowers upon the cushions
beside her. The Colonel stirred, uncrossed his legs, yawned, pulled the
handkerchief from his face, and opened his eyes.

"Faith!" he exclaimed, straightening himself, and taking up his radiant
humor where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have
suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this
half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland
saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's
eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange
blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come
across London pride and none-so-pretty and forget-me-not"--

His daughter smiled, and asked him some idle question about the May-apple
and the Judas-tree. The master of Westover was a treasure house of
sprightly lore. Within ten minutes he had visited Palestine, paid his
compliments to the ancient herbalists, and landed again in his own coach,
to find in his late audience a somewhat _distraite_ daughter and a friend
in a brown study. The coach was lumbering on toward Williamsburgh, and
Haward, with level gaze and hand closed tightly upon his horse's reins,
rode by the window, while the lady, sitting in her corner with downcast
eyes, fingered the dogwood blooms that were not paler than her face.

The Colonel's wits were keen. One glance, a lift of his arched brows, the
merest ghost of a smile, and, dragging the younger man with him, he
plunged into politics. Invective against a refractory House of Burgesses
brought them a quarter of a mile upon their way; the necessity for an act
to encourage adventurers in iron works carried them past a milldam; and
frauds in the customs enabled them to reach a crossroads ordinary, where
the Colonel ordered a halt, and called for a tankard of ale. A slipshod,
blue-eyed Cherry brought it, and spoke her thanks in broad Scotch for the
shilling which the gay Colonel flung tinkling into the measure.

That versatile and considerate gentleman, having had his draught, cried to
the coachman to go on, and was beginning upon the question of the militia,