trembling and tying on her bonnet. As for Vivia, she
burst into tears.

"Oh, Ray!" sobbed she, "I wish I were a man!"

"I don't!" said he. "Oh, it's rip-roarious! Come, let's follow our
leader. We'll bring you back the cropple-crown, auntie."

And so they departed, while, breaking into fresh carols, ringing and
dulcet, as they went, Vivia's voice resounded till the woods pealed to
the echo:--

"He waved his proud arm, and the trumpets were blown
The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on,
Till o'er Ravelston crags and on Clermiston lea
Died away the wild war-notes of Bonny Dundee!"

Pursuing the white sun-bonnet down the pasture, Ray kept springing ahead
with his elastic foot, threshing the juniper-plats that little Jane had
already searched, and scattering about them the pungent fragrance of the
sweet-fern thickets,--the breath of summer itself; then returning for a
sober pace or two, would take off his hat, thrust a hand through the
masses of his hair that looked like carved ebony, and show Vivia that
his shadow was exactly as long as her own. And Vivia saw that all this
beating and longing and burning had loosened and shot into manhood a
nature that under the snow of its eightieth winter would yet be that of
a boy. Ray could never be any taller than he was to-day, but he had
broad, sturdy shoulders and a close-knit, nervous frame, while in his
honest, ugly face, that, arch or grave, kept its one contrast of black
eyes and brilliant teeth, there was as much to love as in the superb
beauty of Beltran.

They had reached the meadow's edge at length; Ray was growing more
serious, as the time hurried, when little Jane, with a smothered
exclamation, prepared to cross the wall. For there they were, sleek and
glossy, chattering gently to each other, pecking about, the wind blowing
open their feathers till they became top-heavy, and looking for all the
world, as Janet said, like pretty little old ladies dressed up to go out
to tea. And near them, quite at home in the marshy domain, strutted and
lunched a fine gallant of a turkey, who ruffled his redness, dropped all
his plumes about him, and personated nothing less than some stately
dowager sailing in flounces and brocades. Ray caught back their
discoverer, launched a few stepping-stones across, and, speeding from
foothold to foothold, very soon sent His Magnificence fluttering over
the fence and forward before them, and returned with the two li