as John Hartington, famed for his leaping too, and measuring
widest at the chest and waist of all the hearty fellows at the
university. His blond curls clustered above a brow almost as innocent
as a child's; his frank and brave blue eyes, his free step, his mellow
laugh, bespoke the perfect animal, unharmed by civilization, unperplexed
by the closing century's fallacies and passions. The wholesome oak that
spreads its roots deep in the generous soil, could not be more a part
of nature than he. Conscientious, unimaginative, direct, sincere,
industrious, he was the ideal man of his kind, and his return to town
caused a flutter among the maidens which they did not even attempt to
conceal. They told him all the chat, of course, and, among other things,
mentioned the great sensation of the year,--the coming of the woman
with her mystery, the purchase of the sunny upland, the planting it
with clover and with mignonette, the building of the house of logs,
the keeping of the bees, the barren rooms, the busy, silent life, the
charities, the never-ending wonder of it all. And then the woman--kind,
yet different from the rest, with the foreign trick of tongue, the slow,
proud walk, the delicate, slight hands, the beautiful, beautiful smile,
the air as of a creature from another world.

Hartington, strolling beyond the village streets, up where the sunset
died in daffodil above the upland, saw the little cot of logs, and out
before it, among blood-red poppies, the woman of whom he had heard. Her
gown of white gleamed in that eerie radiance, glorified, her sad great
eyes bent on him in magnetic scrutiny. A peace and plenitude of power
came radiating from her, and reached him where he stood, suddenly, and
for the first time in his careless life, struck dumb and awed. She, too,
seemed suddenly abashed at this great bulk of youthful manhood, innocent
and strong. She gazed on him, and he on her, both chained with
some mysterious enchantment. Yet neither spoke, and he, turning in
bewilderment at last, went back to town, while she placed one hand on
her lips to keep from calling him. And neither slept that night, and in
the morning when she went with milking pail and stool out to the grassy
field, there he stood at the bars, waiting. Again they gazed, like
creatures held in thrall by some magician, till she held out her hand
and said,--

"We must be friends, although we have not met. Perhaps we ARE old
friends. They say there have been w