rations of Romance made
enchanted ground of the whole place. In the library an older Jack and
Elizabeth sat recalling the night like this when they had entered
_their_ Arcady. Outside, under the arching locusts, up and down, up and
down, paced the old Colonel in the moonlight. But not alone; for every
lilac-laden breeze that stirred the branches whispered softly,
"_Amanthis! Amanthis!_"

Once Jack looked at Betty, sitting beside him in the broad shaft of
moonlight, its glory streaming across her white dress and fair face and
said, "It's like that song, 'Oh, fair and sweet and holy,' out here. Why
couldn't we have the wedding on the porch, where I first saw you,
instead of in the house? Right here in this moonlight that makes you
look like a snowdrop."

"Would you really like to have it out here?" asked Betty, pleased by the
idea herself and pleased because he suggested it. "It would be a very
simple matter to have it so, and there'll be nobody critical enough
among our few guests to call us sentimental if we do."

So it came about that the wedding next night was the simplest and most
beautiful that any one there had ever witnessed. Besides the two
families, Miss Allison and Alex Shelby were the only guests; Alex,
because of the part he had played in restoring Jack to health, and Miss
Allison, because no occasion in the Valley seemed quite complete without
her. She had been too closely bound up with all the good times of
Betty's little girl days and her happy maidenhood, not to be present at
this time.

Betty had said, "I want my last evening at The Locusts to be just like
the first one that I ever spent here, in one way. Then Lloyd sang and
played on her harp. I've missed it so much since she took it over to
Oaklea. I'd love to have the memory of her music one of the last that I
carry away with me."

So that night, when she stepped out on the porch all dressed for her
bridal, she found the harp standing in one corner, gleaming in the
moonlight like burnished gold. Fair and tall, it impressed her as it had
done when it first struck her childish fancy, that its strings had just
been swept by some one of the Shining Ones beyond, who were a part of
the Pilgrim's dream. She was standing beside it when Lloyd and Rob and
Jack walked over from Oaklea. Her filmy white dress, exquisitely
cloud-like and dainty, was as simple and girlish as the one she had worn
the night before; but this time Jack did not compare her to a sno