laughingly recounted her adventure. I believe our family are
predisposed to strong feelings, for I never witnessed a love more
engrossing than was hers for the young Lindenwood; nor was his devotion
to her less remarkable. They were married, and I left them to pursue my
wanderings alone.

"When, after a lapse of several years, I returned, it was to stand over
their death-beds, and receive their boy under my protection. His father
was rich, and a large fortune was left to his only child. A few more
years I roamed, and then with the young Edgar sought my native shores.

"You know the rest. It is a long yarn I have spun you," said he, rising,
"and I marvel you are not both asleep."

"Are you going back to the forest to-night?" asked Mrs. Danforth, as he
wrapped the long coat about his thin form, and placed the broad-brimmed
hat over his gray locks.

"Yes, Delia," answered he. "I sleep best with the roar of the cedars in
my ears."

"I will go with you," said Willie, springing for his cap.

The twain set forth together, while the lonely woman sought her couch
and thought mournfully of long-past days and years.

CHAPTER XLVI.

"She is a bustling, stalwart dame, and one
That well might fright a timid, modest man.
Look how she swings her arms, and treads the floor
With direful strides!"

It was a bright, sunny spring morning, and Wimbledon was beautiful in
budding foliage, singing blue-birds and placid little river, with the
sunbeams silvering its ripply surface.

The windows of Mr. Pimble's kitchen were raised and therein Peggy Nonce
moved vigorously to and fro, with rolled-up sleeves and glowing face,
stirring a great fire which roared and crackled in the jaws of a huge
oven, and then back to the pantry, where she wielded the sceptre of an
immense rolling-pin triumphantly over whole trays of revolting
pie-crust, marched forth long files of submissive pies, and lodged them
in the red-hot prison.

While the stalwart house-keeper was thus occupied, Mr. Pimble, with a
yellow silk handkerchief tied over his straggling locks, and his pale,
palm-figured wrapper drawn closely around him, scraped the stubbed claw
of a worn-out corn broom over the kitchen floor, clapping his heelless
slippers after him as he moved slowly along. Peggy never heeded him at
all, but rushed to and fro, as if there had been no presence in the
kitchen save her own, ofte