e community system."

Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, Phoebe
accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed, but busied herself
still more with cogitations respecting this young man, with whom she so
unexpectedly found herself on terms approaching to familiarity. She
did not altogether like him. His character perplexed the little
country-girl, as it might a more practised observer; for, while the
tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the impression
left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth modified
it, almost sternness. She rebelled, as it were, against a certain
magnetic element in the artist's nature, which he exercised towards
her, possibly without being conscious of it.

After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows of the
fruit-trees and the surrounding buildings, threw an obscurity over the
garden.

"There," said Holgrave, "it is time to give over work! That last stroke
of the hoe has cut off a beanstalk. Good-night, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon!
Any bright day, if you will put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and
come to my rooms in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of
sunshine, and make a picture of the flower and its wearer." He retired
towards his own solitary gable, but turned his head, on reaching the
door, and called to Phoebe, with a tone which certainly had laughter in
it, yet which seemed to be more than half in earnest.

"Be careful not to drink at Maule's well!" said he. "Neither drink nor
bathe your face in it!"

"Maule's well!" answered Phoebe. "Is that it with the rim of mossy
stones? I have no thought of drinking there,--but why not?"

"Oh," rejoined the daguerreotypist, "because, like an old lady's cup of
tea, it is water bewitched!"

He vanished; and Phoebe, lingering a moment, saw a glimmering light,
and then the steady beam of a lamp, in a chamber of the gable. On
returning into Hepzibah's apartment of the house, she found the
low-studded parlor so dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate
the interior. She was indistinctly aware, however, that the gaunt
figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of the straight-backed
chairs, a little withdrawn from the window, the faint gleam of which
showed the blanched paleness of her cheek, turned sideways towards a
corner.

"Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?" she asked.

"Do, if you please, my dear child," answered Hepzibah. "But put it o