she had induced Aunt Janet
to let her wear it to the concert.

"But there's no sense in going for it in the dead of night," I objected.
"It will be quite safe. You can go for it in the morning."

"Lizzie Paxton and her daughter are going to clean the school tomorrow,
and I heard Lizzie say tonight she meant to be at it by five o'clock to
get through before the heat of the day. You know perfectly well what
Liz Paxton's reputation is. If she finds that necklace I'll never see it
again. Besides, if I wait till the morning, Aunt Janet may find out that
I left it there and she'd never let me wear it again. No, I'm going for
it now. If you're afraid," added the Story Girl with delicate scorn, "of
course you needn't come."

Afraid! I'd show her!

"Come on," I said.

We slipped out of the house noiselessly and found ourselves in the
unutterable solemnity and strangeness of a dark night. It was a new
experience, and our hearts thrilled and our nerves tingled to the charm
of it. Never had we been abroad before at such an hour. The world around
us was not the world of daylight. 'Twas an alien place, full of weird,
evasive enchantment and magicry.

Only in the country can one become truly acquainted with the night.
There it has the solemn calm of the infinite. The dim wide fields lie in
silence, wrapped in the holy mystery of darkness. A wind, loosened from
wild places far away, steals out to blow over dewy, star-lit, immemorial
hills. The air in the pastures is sweet with the hush of dreams, and one
may rest here like a child on its mother's breast.

"Isn't it wonderful?" breathed the Story Girl as we went down the long
hill. "Do you know, I can forgive Sara Ray now. I thought tonight I
never could--but now it doesn't matter any more. I can even see how
funny it was. Oh, wasn't it funny? 'DEAD' in that squeaky little voice
of Sara's! I'll just behave to her tomorrow as if nothing had happened.
It seems so long ago now, here in the night."

Neither of us ever forgot the subtle delight of that stolen walk. A
spell of glamour was over us. The breezes whispered strange secrets of
elf-haunted glens, and the hollows where the ferns grew were brimmed
with mystery and romance. Ghostlike scents crept out of the meadows
to meet us, and the fir wood before we came to the church was a living
sweetness of Junebells growing in abundance.

Junebells have another and more scientific name, of course. But who
could desire a better name