face with a
languorous smile. The melting song pervaded the air, but neither of
them lifted a noting finger.

Leonard rose to his feet. Ruth gave him a hand and then its fellow, and
as he pressed them together she said, "I wish you _would_ go away
for a time."

He dropped one of her hands, and keeping the other, started slowly
homeward; and it was not until they had climbed half the ascent that,
with his most remote yet boyish smile, he replied, "I don't think I'd
better."

VI

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

August, September, October, November,--so passed the year in gorgeous
recession over Bylow Hill. Among their dismantled trees the three homes
stood unveiled to the town on the meadows and to travellers who looked
from train windows while crossing the river bridge. To those who
inquired whose they were there was always some one more than ready to
give names and details, and to tell how perfect a bond ever had
been--how beautiful a fellowship was yet, now--up there.

Sevenfold they called it, although one of the seven was away; namely,
Lieutenant Godfrey Winslow, of the navy, famed for his splendid behavior
in the late so-and-so affair. That stately house at the right, they
said, was his home what brief times the sea was not.

There lived, it would be added, his younger brother, so rapidly coming
into note,--the eccentric but gifted rector of All Angels; whose great
success in the heart of a Congregational community was due hardly more
to his high talents than to the combined winsomeness and practical
sympathies of his beautiful bride, or to the resourceful wisdom and zeal
of his churchwarden, Leonard Byington.

"Any relation to Byington, your new political leader in these parts?"

"Same man," the answer would be, and there the narrator was sure to fall
into a glowing tribute to the ideal companionship existing between the
rector, his bride, the young district attorney, and Ruth Byington.

What made this intimacy the more interesting was, in the eyes of a
growing number of observers, that, as they said, "Arthur Winslow was not
always an affable man, and was much more rarely a happy one."

Behind and above this popular verdict was that of the old street behind
and above the town,--a sort of revised version, a higher criticism. If
the young rector, this old street explained, oftener looked anxious than
complacent, so in their time, most likely, did St. Paul and St. Peter.
If he was not always affable, why, nei