entered the house
and placed the pail upon a shelf.

. . . . . . . . .

The breeze freshened, after the sun went down, . . . there were stars
in the night besides those known to astronomers; the stellular
fire-flies gemmed the black shadows with a fluctuating brilliancy;
they circled in and out of the porch, and touched the leaves above
Clarsie's head with quivering points of light. A steadier and an
intenser gleam was advancing along the road, and the sound of languid
footsteps came with it; the aroma of tobacco graced the atmosphere,
and a tall figure walked up to the gate.

"Come in, come in," said Peter Giles, rising, and tendering the guest
a chair. "Ye air Tom Pratt, ez well ez I kin make out by this light.
Waal, Tom, we hain't furgot ye sence ye done been hyar."

. . . . . . . .

The young man took leave presently, in great depression of
spirits. . . . Clarsie ascended the ladder to a nook in the roof which
she called her room.

For the first time in her life her slumber was fitful and restless,
long intervals of wakefulness alternating with snatches of fantastic
dreams. . . . And then her mind reverted to Tom Pratt, to old Simon
Burney, and to her mother's emphatic and oracular declaration that
widowers are in league with Satan, and that the girls upon whom they
cast the eye of supernatural fascination have no choice in the matter.
"I wish I knowed ef that thar sayin' war true," she murmured, her face
still turned to the western spurs, and the moon sinking slowly toward
them.

With a sudden resolution she rose to her feet. She knew a way of
telling fortunes which was, according to tradition, infallible, and
she determined to try it, and ease her mind as to her future. Now was
the propitious moment. "I hev always hearn that it won't come true
'thout ye try it jes' before daybreak, an' kneelin' down at the forks
of the road." She hesitated a moment and listened intently. "They'd
never git done a-laffin' at me, ef they fund it out," she
thought. . . . [She went out into the road.] She fixed her eyes upon
the mystic sphere dropping down the sky, knelt among the azaleas at
the forks of the road, and repeated the time-honored invocation: "Ef
I'm a-goin' ter marry a young man, whistle, Bird, whistle. Ef I'm
a-goin' ter marry an old man, low, Cow, low. Ef I ain't a-goin' ter
marry nobody, knock, Death, knock."

There was a prolonged silence in the matutinal freshness and perfume
of the woods. She raised her