me and caused me to search the silence and darkness of the
night for some trace of a human presence, if only so much as the mark
of a human foot. And I found it. There, in the wet margin of the
stream, I came upon a token which may mean nothing and which may
mean--But I cannot write even here of the doubts it brought me; I
will only tell how on our slow and wearisome passage home through the
sombre woods, Orrin suddenly let his bridle fall, and, flinging up his
arms above his head, cried bitterly:

"O that I did not love her so well! O that I had never seen her who
would make of me a slave when I would be a man!"

* * * * *

The gossips at the corners nod knowingly this morning, and Orrin,
whose brow is moodier than the Colonel's, walks fiercely amongst them
without word and without look. He is on his way to Juliet's house, and
if there is enchantment left in smiles, I bid her to use it, for her
fate is trembling in the balance, and may tip in a direction of which
she little recks.

* * * * *

Orrin has come back. Striding impetuously into the room where I sat at
work, he drew himself up till his figure showed itself in all its
full and graceful proportions.

"Am I a man?" he asked, "or," with a fall in his voice brimmed with
feeling, "am I a fool? She met me with such an unsuspicious look,
Philo, and bore herself with such an innocent air, that I not only
could not say what I meant to say, but have promised to do what I have
sworn never to do--accept the Colonel's unwelcome gift, and make her
mistress of the new stone house."

"You are--a man," I answered. For what are men but fools where women
of such enchantment are concerned!

He groaned, perhaps at the secret sarcasm hidden in my tone, and sat
down unbidden at the table where I was writing.

"You did not see her," he cried. "You do not know with what charms she
works, when she wishes to comfort and allure." Ah! did I not. "And
Philo," he went on, almost humbly for him, "you are mistaken if you
think she had any hand in the ruin which has come upon me. She had not.
How I know it I cannot say, but I am ready to swear it, and you must
forget any foolish fears I may have shown or any foolish words I may
have uttered in the first confusion of my loss and disappointment."

"I will forget," said I.

"The fact is I do not understand her," he eagerly explained. "There
was innocence in her air, but