lina accepted it
meekly.

"Like this?" asked Johnny of her smiling face.

"I love it," she told him, and looked happily at the green woods about
them, and across the river, rushing now, to where the forest was
clinging to sharply rising mountain flanks. Her eyes followed till they
found the bare, shouldering peaks outlined against the blue and white
of the cumulous sky.

The beauty about her flooded the springs of happiness. It was a
wonderful world, a radiant world, a world of dream and delights. It was
a world more real than the fantasy of moonlight. She felt more real. She
was herself, too, not some strange, diaphanous image conjured out of
tulle and gauze, she was her own true flesh-and-blood self, living in a
dream that was true.

She looked away from the mountains and smiled up at Johnny Byrd very
much as the young princess in the fairy tale must have smiled at the
all-conquering prince, and Johnny Byrd's blue eyes grew bluer and
brighter and his voice dropped into intimate possessiveness.

It didn't matter in the least what they talked about. They were absurdly
merry, loitering behind the procession.

Suddenly it occurred to Maria Angelina that it had been some time since
he had drawn her back from Cousin Jane's casual but comprehending
smile, some time since they had even heard the echo of voices ahead.

Her conscience woke guiltily.

"We must hurry," she declared, quickening her own small steps.

Teasingly Johnny Byrd hung back. "'Fraid cat, 'fraid cat--what you
'fraid of, Maria Angelina?"

He added, "I'm not going to eat you--though I'd like to," he finished in
lower tone.

"But it is getting dark! There are clouds," said the girl, gazing up in
frank surprise at the changed sky. She had not noticed when the sunlight
fled. It was still visible across the river, slipping over a hill's
shoulder, but from their woods it was withdrawn and a dark shadow was
stretching across them.

"Clouds--what do you care for clouds?" scoffed Johnny gayly, and in his
rollicking tenor, "Just roll dem clouds along," sang he.

Politely Maria Angelina waited until he had finished the song, but she
waited with an uneasy mind.

She cared very much for clouds. They looked very threatening, blowing so
suddenly over the mountain top, overcasting the brightness of the way.
And behind the scattered white were blowing gray ones, their edges
frayed like torn clothes on a line, and after the gray ones loomed a
dark, black one