miles away. For once, a glance at the mountain sufficed him; and he
directed his gaze through the trees at the Duncan house, engaging in a
pleasant game of conjecture as to which was her window. In such weather
the heights of Helicon seemed as attainable as the peak of Holdfast; and
he had but to beckon a shining Pegasus from out a sun-shaft in the sky.
Obstacles were mere specks on the snow.

He forgot to close the window, and dressed in a temperature which
would have meant, for many mortals, pneumonia. The events of yesterday;
painful and agitating as they had been, had fallen away in the prospect
that lay before him--he would see her to-day, and speak with her. These
words, like a refrain; were humming in his head as honest Mr. Redbrook
talked during breakfast, while Austen's answers may have been both
intelligent and humorous. Mr. Redbrook, at least; gave no sign that they
were not. He was aware that Mr. Redbrook was bringing arguments to bear
on the matter of the meeting of the evening before, but he fended these
lightly, while in spirit he flung a gem-studded bridle aver the neck of
Pegasus.

And after breakfast--away from the haunts of men! Away from the
bickerings, the subjection of mean spirits; material loss and gain and
material passion! By eight o'clock (the Widow Peasley's household
being an early and orderly one) he was swinging across the long hills,
cleaving for himself a furrowed path in the untrodden snow, breathing
deep as he gazed across the blue spaces from the crests. Bellerophon or
Perseus, aided by immortals, felt no greater sense of achievements to
come than he. Out here, on the wind-swept hills that rolled onward and
upward to the mountains, the world was his.

With the same speed he returned, still by untrodden paths until he
reached the country road that ended in the city street. Some who saw him
paused in their steps, caught unconsciously by the rhythmic perfection
of his motion. Ahead of him he beheld the state-house, its dial aflame
in the light, emblematic to him of the presence within it of a spirit
which cleansed it of impurities. She would be there; nay, when he looked
at the dial from a different angle, was there. As he drew nearer, there
rose out of the void her presence beside him which he had daily tried to
summon since that autumn afternoon--her voice and her eyes, and many of
the infinite expressions of each and both. Sprites that they were, they
had failed him until to-day, wh