Byrd, it seemed, for the moment, worth the while. At
his invitation she had taken his hand and descended from the coach. The
great, painted thing moved slowly forward, bearing the unconscious
Colonel, and the two pedestrians walked behind it: he with his horse's
reins over his arm and his hat in his hand; she lifting her silken skirts
from contact with the ground, and looking, not at her companion, but at
the greening boughs, and at the sunlight striking upon smooth, pale beech
trunks and the leaf-strewn earth beneath. Out of the woods came a sudden
medley of bird notes, clear, sweet, and inexpressibly joyous.

"That is a mockingbird," said Haward. "I once heard one of a moonlight
night, beside a still water"--

He broke off, and they listened in silence. The bird flew away, and they
came to a brook traversing the road, and flowing in wide meanders through
the forest. There were stepping-stones, and Haward, crossing first, turned
and held out his hand to the lady. When she was upon his side of the
streamlet, and before he released the slender fingers, he bent and kissed
them; then, as there was no answering smile or blush, but only a quiet
withdrawal of the hand and a remark about the crystal clearness of the
brook, looked at her, with interrogation in his smile.

"What is that crested bird upon yonder bough," she asked,--"the one that
gave the piercing cry?"

"A kingfisher," he answered, "and cousin to the halcyon of the ancients.
If, when next you go to sea, you take its feathers with you, you need have
no fear of storms."

A tree, leafless, but purplish pink with bloom, leaned from the bank above
them. He broke a branch and gave it to her. "It is the Judas-tree," he
told her. "Iscariot hanged himself thereon."

Around the trunk of a beech a lizard ran like a green flame, and they
heard the distant barking of a fox. Large white butterflies went past
them, and a hummingbird whirred into the heart of a wild honeysuckle that
had hasted to bloom. "How different from the English forests!" she said.
"I could love these best. What are all those broad-leaved plants with the
white, waxen flowers?"

"May-apples. Some call them mandrakes, but they do not rise shrieking, nor
kill the wight that plucks them. Will you have me gather them for you?"

"I will not trouble you," she answered, and presently turned aside to pull
them for herself.

He looked at the graceful, bending figure and lifted his brows; then,
quickening h