ferance of the thought, both fears and prognostics. He turned his
back and walked rapidly and uneasily up and down the path between the
tree and the old well.

He had left Dorcas blooming, lovely, and twenty-two. As blooming, as
lovely, as lithe, and as sparkling, she was now. His own eyes had seen
the vision.

But would she remember and love him still? For the first time it
occurred to him that he must himself be somewhat changed,--changed
certainly, since old Taft did not recognize him, after all the hogsheads
of rum he had sold him! For the first time he felt a little thrill of
fear, lest Dorcas should have been inconstant,--or lest, seeing him now,
she might not love him as she once did. A faint blush passed over his
face.

He raised his eyes, and Dorcas stood before him at the distance of a few
feet: the bloom on her delicate cheek the same,--the dimpled chin, the
serene forehead, the arch and laughing eyes!

Somehow, she seemed like a ghost, too; for, when he stepped towards her,
she retreated, keeping the same distance between them.

"Dorcas!" said Swan, imploringly.

"What do you want of me?" answered a sweet voice, trembling and low.

"Are you really Dorcas? really, really _my_ Dorcas?" said Swan, in an
agony of uncertain emotion.

"To be sure I am Dorcas!" answered the girl, in a half-terrified,
half-petulant tone.

In a moment she darted up the path out of sight, just as Dorcas had done
on the last night he had seen her!

Had he kept the kiss on his lips with which he had parted from
her,--that kiss which, to him at least, had been one of betrothal?

The short day was nearly dead. In the gloom of the darkening twilight,
Swan stood leaning against the old tree and looking up the path where
the figure had disappeared, doubting whether a vision had deluded his
senses or not.

Was Dorcas indeed separated from him? Was there no bringing back the
sweet, olden time of love to her? She had seemed to shrink from him and
fade out of sight. Could she never indeed love him again?

It was getting dark. But for the great, broad moon, that just then shone
out from behind the Ridge Hill, he would not have seen another figure
coming down the path from the house. Swan felt as if he had lived a long
time in the last half-hour.

A woman walked cautiously towards him, apparently proceeding to the
well. She stooped a little, and a wooden hoop round her person supported
a pail on each side, which she had evidently