gh. When at
last he caught and handed back to me my property, we were thoroughly
exhausted and sat down at the foot of the hill on the mossy
tree-roots. I am sure we must have looked very silly, for we were so
out of breath that we could not leave off laughing,--my young man
has the heartiest laugh I ever heard. When we had somewhat
recovered, I said:

"I wonder why one always laughs when something blows away?"

"It is," he replied, with mock gravity, "what people call a wise
dispensation of Providence. There is nothing between laughter and
tears."

It never entered my head to get up and go my way; his shyness, too,
seemed vanished; we were quite at ease.

"Have you ever noticed," asked he, "how many different kinds of moss
there are in these woods?"--and we began to count the varieties as
we sat. At last I looked up and saw that the heavens were blue.

"I'm going uphill again," said I, "to see the sunset. How quickly
the sky has cleared! It almost seems as if some invisible broom had
made a clean sweep of the clouds." To which the young man answered:

"It was a birch-broom. I see the marks of it."

We climbed the hill side by side; it did not seem at all strange at
the time. When we reached the summit, the sun was setting in fullest
glory, and we were silent. Suddenly he cried:

"Let us be fire-worshippers! There is more of God in that great
light than in all the gospels of mankind."

"What a queer, comforting thing," said I, "to hear from a stranger
in a wood."

It struck me afterwards that perhaps I, too, had said a queer thing;
but we seemed to understand each other. Presently we sat down again,
and he talked to me about the Parsees; he appears to know a great
deal about them.

We narrowly escaped a second run downhill; again the wind seized my
hat, but he nimbly caught it on the wing.

"Why don't you do as I do?" he asked, passing his fingers through
his hair. "It's a great mistake to wear a hat, especially if one has
a turn for trespassing."

"Who tells you," laughed I then, "that I am trespassing? For aught
you know, this may be my own ground."

The young man looked at me curiously.

"Are you, then, Emilia Fletcher?" he cried.

I nodded assent; whereupon he held out his hand and jerked his head
forward; it was evidently an attempt at courtesy. I took the hand
and laughed outright: he looked so funny with his bright eyes
twinkling beneath the tangled forelock.

"I have heard of you," he sai