Her heart beat loud in her ears. There
was a whippoorwill calling in some trees to the left; the moon was
dim under a golden dapple of clouds. She could not feel her hands or
her feet; she seemed to feel nothing except her soul.

Then she heard, loud and sweet and clear, a boy's whistle, one of
the popular tunes of the day. It came nearer and nearer, and it was
in the same key with the child's thoughts and dreams. Then she saw a
slender figure dark against the moonlight stop at a fence, and she
jumped up and ran towards it with no hesitation through the dewy
grass; and it was the boy, Granville Joy. He stood looking at her.
He had a handsome, eager face, and Ellen looked at him, her lips
parted, her face like a lily in the white light.

"Hulloo," said the boy.

"Hulloo," Ellen responded, faintly.

Granville extended one rough, brown, boyish hand over the fence, and
Ellen laid her little, soft hand in it. He pulled her gently close,
then Ellen lifted her face, and the boy bent his, and the two kissed
each other over the fence. Then the boy went on down the street, but
he did not whistle, and Ellen went back to the doorstep, and,
looking about to be sure that none of the men in the sitting-room
saw, pulled off one little shoe and drew forth a sprig of
southernwood, or boy's-love, which was crushed under her foot.

That day Floretta Vining had told her that if she would put a sprig
of boy's-love in her shoe, the very first boy she met would be the
one she was going to marry; and Ellen, who was passing from one
grade of school to another, had tried it.

Chapter XIV

The high-school master was a distant relative of the Lloyd's,
through whom he had obtained the position. One evening when he was
taking tea with them at Cynthia Lennox's, he spoke of Ellen. "I have
one really remarkable scholar," he said, with a curious air of
self-gratulation, as if he were principally responsible for it; "her
name is Brewster--Ellen Brewster."

"Good land! That must be the child that ran away five or six years
ago, and all the town up in arms over it," said Mrs. Norman Lloyd.
"Don't you remember, Cynthia?"

"Yes," replied Cynthia, and continued pouring tea. Cynthia was very
little changed. In some faces time seems to engrave lines
delicately, once for all, and then lay by. She was rather more
charming now than when one had looked at her with any expectancy of
youth, since there was now no sense of disappointment.

"I rem