r mind and gone South already?" he asked himself.

There was a new sexton in the gate-house, who could tell him nothing
about her. He wandered through the grounds, looking for the old woman
with the watering-pot, but the season had grown cold, and she had
probably ceased her gardening operations for the year. He continued his
walk beyond the marshes. The woods had grown rusty and the sandy
pastures outside the city were ringing with the incessant creak of
grasshoppers, which rose in clouds under his feet as he brushed through
the thin grass. The blue-curl and the life-everlasting distilled their
pungent aroma in the autumn sunshine. A feeling of change and
forlornness weighed upon his spirit. As with Thomas of Ercildoune, whom
the Queen of Faery carried away into Eildon Hill, the short period of
his absence seemed seven years long. An old English song came into his
head:

Winter wakeneth all my care,
Now these leaves waxeth bare:
Oft in cometh into my thought,
Of this worldes joy how it goeth all to naught.

Soon after arriving at the hills he had written to Miss Pinckney a long
letter of explanations and avowals; but he did not know the number of
her lodgings, or, oddly enough, even her Christian name, and the letter
had been returned to him unopened. The next month was one of the
unhappiest in Putnam's life. On returning to the city, thoroughly
restored in health, he had opened an office, but he found it impossible
to devote himself quietly to the duties of his profession. He visited
the cemetery at all hours, but without success. He took to wandering
about in remote quarters and back streets of the town, and eyed sharply
every female figure that passed him in the twilight, especially if it
walked quickly or wore a veil. He slept little at night, and grew
restless and irritable. He had never confided this experience even to
his mother: it seemed to him something apart.

One afternoon toward the middle of November he was returning homeward
weary and dejected from a walk in the suburbs. His way led across an
unenclosed outskirt of the town which served as a common to the poor
people of the neighborhood. It was traversed by a score of footpaths,
and frequented by goats, and by ducks that dabbled in the puddles of
rain-water collected in the hollows. Halfway across this open tract
stood what had formerly been an old-fashioned country-house, now
converted into a soap-boiling establishment. Around this