y little figure as it
dashed down the unlovely, worm-fenced road. The golden hair, overflowing
its boundaries of blue ribbon, was more glorious to him than the golden
sunshine overflowing the blue sky. They met no more at the spring, but
several times a week, from a respectful distance, he watched her riding
by. From Thompson City to the little log bridge over Crawfish Creek the
road lay for four miles through heavy woods. Then came cleared fields, and
soon the house of Mrs. Ruggles.

So the summer days went by. The season was waning, the grading was almost
done, and soon the contractor would be elsewhere. Then came one
particularly warm and sultry day. The screams of locusts everywhere
suggested that they were frying. The colonel, riding once more slowly out
toward the workmen with his daughter, was near the middle of the forest.
The trees on either hand were tall, and the road was so straight and
narrow that the sunlight scarcely touched it. The marquis, in the top of a
tall chestnut that overhung the road near the edge of the wood, was
overhauling a nest of flying squirrels--perhaps in the hope of finding
mottled feathers on their wings. From his elevation he could see for a
great distance down the level, dusty road between the trees, and far
across the surrounding country.

The sun did not shine bright, yet no cloud was in the sky. The atmosphere,
thick, oppressive, opaque, veiled the horizon with strange gloom. Not a
leaf could stir in the vast forest. Not a dimple nor the semblance of a
current broke the surface of the sluggish creek. Not a sound, save the
interminable frying of the locusts.

The colonel slackened his pace, surprised that his horse should so soon
begin to drip and pant--Alice, familiar with the road, in the mean time
riding a mile ahead. The marquis clung to the topmost branches, looking at
the still sky far above him, the still stream far below him, the still
tree-tops far around him, till he caught a glimpse of the only interesting
object to be seen--a black pony bearing its usual burden, if Alice Miller
could be called a burden, and pacing leisurely up the road beneath him. He
gazed as far as the palisade of trees permitted, but her father was not
yet in sight.

Suddenly, in the west, a single vein of lightning darted down the sky. A
few trees shuddered as if to shake the gathering shadows from their
bosoms. Then tenfold stillness. A bird flew past with a scream of terror,
the marquis looki