l kinds of picnics by this time, considering the number
of generations it had watched them come and go. Nobody could tell how
long it had been since the mill wheel turned its last round and the
miller ground his last grist, but if the stones could babble secrets
like the little spring, trickling down the rocky bank, they would have
had many an interesting tale to tell of all that had happened in their
hearing.

There were many names and initials carved in the bark of the old
beech-trees. Malcolm found his father's and mother's on one, as he
wandered around with Eugenia, and set to work to cut his own underneath.
Eugenia seated herself on a rock near by, to watch him. Keith and Rob,
and the other boys who had been invited to the picnic, busied themselves
by dragging up sticks and logs for a big bonfire. The girls began a game
of "I spy" behind the great rock where the columbines clambered in the
spring, and spread their blossoms like butterflies poised on an airy
stem.

"Come on, Eugenia," they called, but she shrugged her shoulders with
what the girls called a "young ladified air," and turned to Malcolm with
a coquettish glance of her big black eyes.

"I know whose initials you are going to cut with yours," she said.

"Whose?" asked Malcolm, digging away at a capital M.

"Oh, I'll not tell, but I know well enough. There's only one that you
_could_ cut, you know."

"You needn't be so sure about that," said Malcolm, loftily. "I know
plenty of names that I wouldn't mind cutting here in this tree with
mine."

"With a heart around them, like the ones on this tree?" she asked,
pointing to a rude carving on the trunk against which she leaned.

"Yes, with a heart around them," he repeated.

"But there's only one name you would carve that way, and put an _arrow_
through it," she said, meaningly. "At any rate, a silver arrow. Oh,
maybe you think I haven't seen her wear it, and blush when I teased her
about it."

Malcolm went on cutting, without an answer. He had admired Eugenia more
than any girl he had ever seen, but somehow this speech jarred on him.
It did not seem exactly ladylike for her to insist on twitting him in
such a personal way about his friendship for the Little Colonel. _She_
would never have done such a thing, he felt quite sure. For a moment he
half wished that it was Lloyd sitting on the rock beside him, but
Eugenia could be very entertaining when she chose, and she was trying
her best now to make a