winter
would lay its samite on the dark blue ramparts of the mountains, and
droop the naked boughs of the mock-orange bushes, dishevel the
evergreens like rough-and-tumble schoolboys, and cover the frosted ruts
of the Red Road. But in Damory Court would be cheerful warmth and
friendly noises, with a loved woman standing before the crackling
fireplace whose mottoed "_I clinge_" was for him written in her fringed
and gentian eyes. So he stood dreaming--a dream in the open sunlight, of
a future that should never end, of work and plan, of comradeship and
understanding, of cheer and tenderness and clasping hands and clinging
lips--of a woman's arms held out in that same adorable gesture of the
tourney field, to little children's uncertain footsteps across that
polished floor.

* * * * *

When he came from the little close there was a new mystery in the
sunshine, a fresh and joyous meaning in the intense blue overarching
of the imponderable sky. Every bird-note held its own love-secret. A
wood-thrush sang it from a silver birch beside the summer-house, and
a bob-white whistled it in the little valley beyond. Even the long
trip-hammer of a far-away woodpecker beat a radiant tattoo.

He paused to greet the flaming peacock that sent out a curdling screech,
in which the tentative _potterack! potterack!_ of a guinea-fowl tangled
itself softly. "Go on," he invited. "Explode all you want to, old
Fire-Cracker. Hang your purple-and-gold pessimism! You only make the
birds sound sweeter. Perhaps that's what you're for--who knows?"

He tried to work, but work was not for that marvelous afternoon. He
wandered about the gardens, planning this or that addition: a little
longer sweep to the pansy-bed--a clump of bull-rushes at the farther end
of the lake. He peered into the stable: a saddle horse stood there now,
but there should be more steeds stamping in those stalls one day, good
horse-flesh bought with sound walnut timber from the hillside. How he
and Shirley would go galloping over those gleaming roads, in that
roseate future when she belonged to him!

Uncle Jefferson, from the door of the kitchens, watched him swinging
about in the sunshine, whistling the _Indian Serenade_.

"Young mars' feel 'way up in de clouds _dis_ day," he said to Aunt
Daphne. "He wake up ez glad ez ef he done 'fessed 'ligion las' night.
Well, all de folkses cert'n'y 'joyed deyselves. Ol' Mistah Fargo done
eat 'bout forty uh d