shading into yellow, and curiously
mottled with tiny points of red; all these shades and colors sometimes
being seen upon one long runner. The effect of these wreaths and tangles
of color upon the old, gray stones was so fine that Mercy stood still and
involuntarily exclaimed aloud. Then she picked a few of the most
beautiful vines, and, climbing up on the wall, sat down to arrange them
with the maple-leaves she had already gathered. She made a most
picturesque picture as she sat there, in her severe black gown and quaint
little black bonnet, on the stone wall, surrounded by the bright vines and
leaves; her lap full of them, the ground at her feet strewed with them,
her little black-gloved hands deftly arranging and rearranging them. She
looked as if she might be a nun, who had run away from her cloister, and
coming for the first time in her life upon gay gauds of color, in strange
fabrics, had sat herself down instantly to weave and work with them,
unaware that she was on a highway.

This was the picture that Stephen White saw, as he came slowly up the road
on his way home after an unusually wearying day. He slackened his pace,
and, perceiving how entirely unconscious Mercy was of his approach,
deliberately studied her, feature, dress, attitude,--all, as
scrutinizingly as if she had been painted on canvas and hanging on a wall.

"Upon my word," he said to himself, "she isn't bad-looking, after all. I'm
not sure that she isn't pretty. If she hadn't that inconceivable bonnet on
her head,--yes, she is very pretty. Her mouth is bewitching. I declare, I
believe she is beautiful," were Stephen's successive verdicts, as he drew
nearer and nearer to Mercy. Mercy was thinking of him at that very
moment,--was thinking of him with a return of the annoyance and
mortification which had stung her at intervals all day, whenever she
recalled their interview of the previous evening. Mercy combined, in a
very singular manner, some of the traits of an impulsive nature with those
of an unimpulsive one. She did things, said things, and felt things with
the instantaneous intensity of the poetic temperament; but she was quite
capable of looking at them afterward, and weighing them with the cool and
unbiassed judgment of the most phlegmatic realist. Hence she often had
most uncomfortable seasons, in which one side of her nature took the other
side to task, scorned it and berated it severely; holding up its actions
to its remorseful view, as a