id Elizabeth, with the air of a judge
putting a query.

Winthrop looked up, and answered yes.

"Why didn't you ask me to move myself?"

"I would," said Winthrop calmly, -- "if I could have got word
to the snake to keep quiet."

Elizabeth did not know precisely what to say; her cousin was
looking in astonishment, and she saw the corners of Rufus's
mouth twitching; she shut her lips resolutely and followed the
party to the boat.

The talking and laughing was general among them on the way
home, with all but her; she was thinking. She even forgot her
strawberries for little Winifred, which she meant to have
given her in full view of her cousin. She held her basket on
her lap, and looked at the water and didn't see the sunset.

The sun's proper setting was not to be seen, for he went down
far behind Wut-a-qut-o. Wut-a-qut-o's shade was all over the
river and had mounted near to the top of the opposite hills;
but from peak to peak of them the sunlight glittered still,
and overhead the sun threw down broad remembrancers of where
he was and where he had been. The low hills in the distant
north were all in sunlight; as the little boat pulled over the
river they were lost behind the point of Shahweetah, and the
last ray was gone from the last mountain ridge in view. Cool
shadows and lights were over the land, a flood of beauty
overhead in the sky.

It was agreed on all hands that they had been very successful;
and little Winifred openly rejoiced over the quantity they had
brought home for 'mother'; but still Elizabeth did not add her
store, and had nothing to say. When they got to the landing-
place, she would stay on the rocks to see how the boat was
made fast. Winifred ran up to the house with her basket, Miss
Cadwallader went to get ready for supper, Rufus followed in
her steps. Asahel and Elizabeth stayed in the sunset glow to
see Winthrop finish his part of the work; and then they walked
up together. Elizabeth kept her position on one side of the
oars, but seemed as moody as ever, till they were about half
way from the rocks; then suddenly she looked up into
Winthrop's face and said,

"Thank you. I ought to have said it before."

He bowed a little and smiled, in a way that set Elizabeth a
thinking. It was not like a common farmer's boy. It spoke him
as quiet in his own standing as she was in hers; and yet he
certainly had come home that day in his shirt sleeves, and
with his mower's jacket over his arm? It wa