that was all alive with carriages on this
beautiful September morning. The W---- carriage had half halted to
reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us because we had sedulously
looked another way.

"Let's get away," I said, "for the next carnage will not only stop,
but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the
little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with
"Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy
shadow of the waiting woods.

Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no
secrets save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was not
resumed, nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward road
we paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.

It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox. Sparkling
far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining in the
September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue sky, and,
stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed to veil the
bustling village and soften all the rural sounds.

Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into the
valley: "Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be happier,
better here than to go back to New York."

"And the law-business?" I asked like a brutal bear, bringing the
realities of life into my darling's girlish dream.

"Can't you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there every
morning? People do."

"And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must plod along
in the ways that are made for me already. We can make pilgrimages
here, you know."

"I suppose so," said Bessie with a sigh.

Just then Fanny Kemble's clock in the tower above us struck the
hour--one, two, three.

"Bless me! so late? And there's that phaeton coming back over the hill
again. Hurry, Charlie! don't let them see us. They'll think that we've
been here all the time." And Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and
struck off into the side-path that leads into the Lebanon road. The
last vibrations of the bell were still trembling on the air as I
caught up with her again.

But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite out
of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little porch of
Mrs. Sloman's cottage she said, very earnestly, "But you haven't once
said it."

"Said what, my darling?"

"That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad."

"Nonsense! Why should I