throat as the wagon started forward with a jolt, and she realised that
now she was looking her last on safe familiar scenes, and breaking loose
from all safe familiar landmarks.

"Good-bye!" she cried again, looking back at the little group on the
porch with tears in her eyes.

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" they called, in a noisy chorus, repeating the call
like a brood of clacking guineas, until the wagon passed out of sight
down the lane. The road turned at the church. Betty leaned forward for
one more look at the window, on whose sill she had passed so many happy
afternoons reading to Davy. The board was still leaning against the
house, where she had propped it.

"Good-bye, dear old church," she said softly to herself.

They drove around the corner of the little neglected graveyard, where
the headstones gleamed white in the morning sunshine, above the dark,
glossy green of the myrtle vines. How peaceful and quiet it seemed. The
dew still shone in tiny beads on the cobwebs, spun across the grass, a
spicy smell of cedar boughs floated across the road to them, and a dove
called somewhere in the distant woodlands. As they passed, a wild rose
hung over the gray pickets of the straggling old fence, and waved a
spray of pale pink blossoms to them.

"Good-bye," she whispered, turning for one more look at the familiar
headstones. They were like old friends; she had wandered among them so
often. One held her gaze an instant, with its well-known marble hand,
pointing the place in a marble book in which was carved one text. How
often she had spelled the words, pointing out the deeply carven letters
to Davy: "_Be ye also ready._"

She had a vague feeling that the headstones knew she was going away and
would miss her. "Good-bye," she said to them, too, nodding the white
sunbonnet gravely. It seemed a solemn thing to start on such a journey.
After leaving the church there was only one more place to bid good-bye,
and that was the schoolhouse sitting through its lonely vacation time
in a deserted playground, gone to weeds.

There was no time to spare at the station. Mr. Appleton tied the horses
and hurried to have Betty's trunk checked. The shriek of the locomotive
coming down the track made Betty turn cold. It was like a great demon
thundering toward her. Davy edged closer to her, moved by the strange
surroundings to ask a question.

"Say, Betty, ain't you afraid?"

"Yes," she confessed, squeezing the warm little hand in her own,