d
refused to make any of the life-marks that tell stories in faces.
There was abundant room for imagination and prophecy.

A figure not too tall, but full of wavy lines,--two dark-blue eyes,
whose full under-lids gave an expression of arch sweetness to the
glance,--a delicate complexion of roses and lilies, as suggestive of
fading as of blossoming,--features small, and not at all of the Greek
pattern,--and the rather large head and slightly developed bust,
typical of American rural beauty.

To this summary of youthful charms would be at once added the grace of
motion before spoken of, which made Dorcas Fox a favorite with all the
young men in Walton, and which gave her a reputation of beauty which
in strictness she did not deserve. A little habitual ill-health,
and the glamour is gone, with the roses and lilies and the music
of motion. In our climate of fierce extremes, both field- and
garden-flowers speedily wilt and chill. Dorcas herself had been a
thousand times told she was the very picture of her mother at her age.
And just to look now at Mrs. Colonel Fox!

A tall young man stood on the doorsteps of the meeting-house, as
Dorcas went demurely behind her parents in at the open door. He looked
at her with a quick, inquiring glance from his keen Yankee eyes, which
she answered with an almost imperceptible nod of her graceful head.
She dropped her eyes, and passed on. This young man was Henry Mowers,
and he owned the Mowers farm. He was a very good, sensible fellow, and
had "kept company," as the country-phrase is, with Dorcas Fox for
the last few weeks, having, indeed, had his eye on her ever since the
New-Year's sleigh-ride and ball.

After Dorcas had reached her seat in the pew, and adjusted her
spotless Sunday chintz and the ribbon that confined her jaunty
gypsy-hat over her sunny hair, she raised her eyes carelessly to a pew
in a side-aisle. The Dorrs generally occupied it alone; but sometimes
Swan Day, when he wasn't in the choir, sat there too.

Swan Day, or, as he might better have been called, Night Raven, kept
the country-store in Walton. One naturally thought of afternoon
rather than morning at seeing his olive complexion, dark eyes, and
thick-clustering black curls. Such romance as was to be had in Walton,
without the aid of a circulating library, certainly gathered about
Swan Day. An orphan, born of a Creole mother and a British sergeant,
he had been left early to his own resources. He had found them