hot desire to love and be loved, and as its old bitter-sweet
clamourings rushed over me I rebelled that my hair was grey and my
propeller disabled. The young folks ahead had put me out of their life
as young folks do, and, measuring the hearts of their seniors by the
white in their hair and the lines around their eyes, would have been
incredulous that I still had capacity for their own phase. Only the
royalty of youth is tendered love in full measure; those who fail to
attain or grasp it then find this door, from which comes enticing
perfume and sound of luring music, shut against them for all time, and
no matter how appealingly they may lean against its portals, it will
rarely open again, for they have been laid by to be sold as remnants
like the draper's goods which have failed to attract a buyer during
the brief season they were displayed. I stood under the whispering
osage and listened to the now distant train puffing its way over the
wild mountains, also to be crossed by the great road first cut by
those whose now long dead limbs had carried chains--members of a
bygone brigade as I was one of a passing company. But probably they
each had had their chance of love, and the old bitterness upsprung
that mine had not fallen athwart my pathway. Fierce struggle had
always shut me away from similar opportunity to that enjoyed by the
young people ahead.

"Put back your cruel wheel, O Time!" I cried in my heart, "and give me
but one hour's youth again--sweet, ecstatic youth with the bounding
pulse, led by the purple mirage of Hope, whose sirens whisper that the
world's sweets are sweet and its crowns worth winning. Let me for a
space be free from this dastard age creeping through the veins,
dulling the perspective of life and leadening the brain, whose carping
companions draw attention to the bitters in the cups of Youth's
Delights, and mutter that the golden crowns we struggle for shall
tarnish as soon as they are placed on our tired brows!" Suddenly my
bitter reverie was broken by the knight and the lady calling in
startled tones. I replied, and presently they were upon me, Dawn very
much out of breath.

"Oh, goodness, we thought you were ill again. You have given us such a
shock. You should not have been left behind. I was a terrible brute
that I didn't harness the pony and drive over for you;" and Ernest
came in a slow second with--

"You should have taken my arm," and he wrapped my cloak about me with
the high qua