athered colour and light were caught and imprisoned within
the web. At the bend in the river, where the rushes grew thickly, the
river-god kept his harp, which answered with shy, musical murmurings to
every vagrant wind.

Again, the hill was a tower, and she a captive princess, who had refused
to marry except for love, and Love tarried strangely upon the way. Or,
sometimes, she was the Elaine of an unknown Launcelot, safely guarding
his shield. She placed in the woods all the dear people of the books,
held forever between the covers and bound to the printed page, wondering
if they, too, did not long for freedom.

The path up the hill wound in and out among the trees, and so it
happened that Rosemary heard muffled footsteps before she saw him
coming. A wayfaring squirrel, the first of his family to venture out,
scampered madly up a tree and looked down upon the girl with
questioning, fearful eyes. She rose from the log and looked up, with her
hands outstretched in unconscious pleading.

[Sidenote: He Comes]

"Oh," she murmured, "don't be afraid of me!"

"I'm not," answered a man's voice. "I assure you I'm not."

"I wasn't speaking to you," she laughed, as she went to meet him.

"No?" he queried, flushed and breathless from the climb. "I wonder if
there is anyone else for whom you wave red ribbons from your fortress!"

"Take it down, will you please?"

"Wait until I get three full breaths--then I will."

She went back to the log while he awkwardly untied the ribbon, rolled it
up, in clumsy masculine fashion, and restored it to the wooden box in
the hollow tree. "Aren't you cold?" he asked, as he sat down beside her.

"No--I'm too vividly alive to be cold, ever."

"But what's the use of being alive unless you can live?" he inquired,
discontentedly.

She sighed and turned her face away. The colour vanished from her
cheeks, the youth from her figure. Pensively, she gazed across the
valley to the vineyard, where the black, knotted vines were blurred
against the soil in the fast-gathering twilight. His eyes followed hers.

[Sidenote: Rosemary]

"I hate them," he said, passionately. "I wish I'd never seen a grape!"

"Were the children bad to-day?" she asked, irrelevantly.

"Of course. Aren't they always bad? What's the use of caging up fifty
little imps and making 'em learn the multiplication table when they
don't even aspire to the alphabet? Why should I have to teach 'em to
read and write when they're dete