y started up the hill gayly with their burdens, and Ivory
walked by Waitstill's side as she pulled off her birch-bark crown and
twisted her braid around her head with a heightened color at being
watched.

"I'll say good-bye now, Ivory, but I'll see you at the meeting-house,"
she said, as she neared the store. "I'll go in here and brush the pine
needles off, wash my hands, and rest a little before rehearsal. That's a
puzzling anthem we have for to-morrow."

"I have my horse here; let me drive you up to the church."

"I can't, Ivory, thank you. Father's orders are against my driving out
with any one, you know."

"Very well, the road is free, at any rate. I'll hitch my horse down here
in the woods somewhere and when you start to walk I shall follow and
catch up with you. There's luckily only one way to reach the church from
here, and your father can't blame us if we both take it!"

And so it fell out that Ivory and Waitstill walked together in the cool
of the afternoon to the meeting-house on Tory Hill. Waitstill kept the
beaten path on one side and Ivory that on the other, so that the width
of the country road, deep in dust, was between them, yet their nearness
seemed so tangible a thing that each could feel the heart beating in
the other's side. Their talk was only that of tried friends, a talk
interrupted by long beautiful silences; silences that come only to a
man and woman whose understanding of each other is beyond question and
answer. Not a sound broke the stillness, yet the very air, it seemed
to them, was shedding meanings: the flowers were exhaling a love
secret with their fragrances, the birds were singing it boldly from the
tree-tops, yet no word passed the man's lips or the girl's. Patty would
have hung out all sorts of signals and lures to draw the truth from
Ivory and break through the walls of his self-control, but Waitstill,
never; and Ivory Boynton was made of stuff so strong that he would not
speak a syllable of love to a woman unless he could say all. He was only
five-and-twenty, but he had been reared in a rigorous school, and had
learned in its poverty, loneliness, and anxiety lessons of self-denial
and self-control that bore daily fruit now. He knew that Deacon Baxter
would never allow any engagement to exist between Waitstill and himself;
he also knew that Waitstill would never defy and disobey her father if
it meant leaving her younger sister to fight alone a dreary battle for
which she was no