which he preferred to the house, and
Frank Whitwell had gone to church over at the Huddle. As Jeff passed
Whitwell's cottage in setting out on his stroll he saw the philosopher
through the window, seated with his legs on the table, his hat pushed
back, and his spectacles fallen to the point of his nose, reading, and
moving his lips as he read.

The forenoon sun was soft, but the air was cool.

There was still plenty of snow on the upper slopes of the hills, and
there was a drift here and there in a corner of pasture wall in the
valley; but the springtime green was beginning to hover over the wet
places in the fields; the catkins silvered the golden tracery of the
willow branches by the brook; there was a buzz of bees about them, and
about the maples, blackened by the earlier flow of sap through the holes
in the bark made by the woodpeckers' bills. Now and then the tremolo of
a bluebird shook in the tender light and the keen air. At one point in
the road where the sun fell upon some young pines in a sheltered spot a
balsamic odor exhaled from them.

These gentle sights and sounds and odors blended in the influence which
Jeff's spirit felt more and more. He realized that he was a blot on the
loveliness of the morning. He had a longing to make atonement and to win
forgiveness. His heart was humbled toward Cynthia, and he went wondering
how his mother would make it out with her, and how, if she won him any
advantage, he should avail himself of it and regain the girl's trust;
he had no doubt of her love. He perceived that there was nothing for
him hereafter but the most perfect constancy of thought and deed, and he
desired nothing better.

At a turn of his road where it branched toward the Huddle a group of
young girls stood joking and laughing; before Jeff came up with them
they separated, and all but one continued on the way beyond the turning.
She came toward Jeff, who gayly recognized her as she drew near.

She blushed and bridled at his bow and at his beauty and splendor, and
in her embarrassment pertly said that she did not suppose he would have
remembered her. She was very young, but at fifteen a country girl is not
so young as her town sister at eighteen in the ways of the other sex.

Jeff answered that he should have known her anywhere, in spite of her
looking so much older than she did in the summer when she had come with
berries to the hotel. He said she must be feeling herself quite a young
lady now, in her