called the parson excitedly. He was throwing back the robe to
leap from the sleigh when the figure reached him. "Oh!" said he;
"Isabel!"

She was breathing hard with excitement and the determination grown up in
her mind during that last half hour of her exile in the kitchen.

"Parson,"--forgetting a more formal address, and laying her hand on his
knee,--"I've got to say it! Won't you please forgive me? Won't you,
please? I can't explain it"--

"Bless your heart, child!" answered the parson cordially; "you needn't
try to. I guess I made you nervous."

"Yes," agreed Isabel, with a sigh of relief, "I guess you did." And the
parson drove away.

Isabel ran, light of heart and foot, back into the warm sitting-room,
where aunt Mary Ellen was standing just where he had left her. She had
her glasses off, and she looked at Isabel with a smile so vivid that the
girl caught her breath, and wondered within herself how aunt Mary Ellen
had looked when she was young.

"Isabel," said she, "you come here and give me a corner of your apron to
wipe my glasses. I guess it's drier 'n my handkerchief."

HORN O' THE MOON

If you drive along Tiverton Street, and then turn to the left, down the
Gully Road, you journey, for the space of a mile or so, through a
bewildering succession of damp greenery, with noisy brooks singing songs
below you, on either side, and the treetops on the level with your
horse's feet. Few among the older inhabitants ever take this drive, save
from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness there is
enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and as for the
young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its miniature
suggestion of impassable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no youth
reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes alone is
the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three trusty comrades
reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call, but to stand his
witnesses when he afterwards declares where he has been. It is a
fearsome thing to explore that lower stratum of this round world, so
close to the rushing brook that it drowns your thoughts, though not your
apprehensions, and to go slipping about over wet boulders and among
dripping ferns; but your fears are fears of the spirit. They are
inherited qualms. You shiver because your grandfathers and fathers and
uncles have shivered there before you. If you are very brave indeed, and
naught bu