nd buggy. Some time before this, loud calls from the
house and faintly returned answers from the creek had apprized him of
Bip's shameless truancy; but he was fully expecting the mountaineer to
go with them until this very minute when he saw what character of
vehicle stood before the house. He arose and crossed to her, casually
asking:

"Where's Dale?"

Two lights crossed the lenses of her eyes, but no timer could have
caught them.

"Where?" she asked. "Who knows? He's so utterly oblivious to everything,
living in an age so long before the Christian era, that it would be a
paradox to take him into a latter-day church."

While speaking she had come down the steps. He helped her in and settled
himself comfortably beside her.

"Did you notice how he flew from the dinner table straight back to his
books?" she asked, as they turned out of the gate. "When I looked over
his shoulder a while ago he was with Cicero again. He adores Cicero!"

"I'm beginning to like old Cis myself," Brent forced a grin and let the
horse out a step. "Never knew he could be such a good friend till now.
Crawfish and Cicero!--henceforth my amulets!"

But he was not happy, and she knew it. To deceive her he was
play-acting, and she knew this, too.

The sun lay behind them, and the afternoon was rich with every enticing
charm. The chapel, in modest seclusion, stood off in the valley, and was
reached from Arden by a typical country lane--as narrow as it was
noiseless--rising and dipping through miles and miles of rolling fields
and woods. Its sides were thickly woven vines, and younger trees and
shrubs, which gave out a woody fragrance; especially in the cooler,
damper places sloping down to meet and pass beneath some small, clear
stream.

This valley was in its most languid mood. Bluegrass stood ripe in the
pastures, each stem tilting wearily beneath a burden of seed. Wheat was
in the shock, and its sheaves leaned against each other as though
fatigued with having brought so large a yield; while the golden fields
of stubble lent a softer tone to the sturdy corn, or the less mature
hemp and tobacco. It was a season when at morning the harvester's call,
or at noon the wood-dove's melancholy note, or at evening the low of
Jersey herds, were irresistible invitations to poetic drowsiness.

Brent slowly turned and looked at her. Up to this time he had been
speaking only of indifferent things.

"I think it is all I can do to keep from making love