nxiously through the large audiences that attended
them,--hopelessly,--for how could he expect to find Laura among them?
Often he left the railroads, to walk through the villages. It was the
summer time, and he enjoyed the zest of climbing hills and wandering
through quiet valleys.

He met with pleasant greetings in farm-houses, so far from the world that
a stranger was greeted as a friend, where hospitality had not been so long
worn upon but that it could offer a fresh cordiality to an unknown face.
He wished he were a painter, that he might paint the pretty domestic
scenes he saw: the cattle coming home at evening,--the children crowding
round the school-mistress, as they walked away with her from the
school-door,--the groups of girls sitting at sunset on the door-steps
under the elms,--the broad meadows,--the rushing mountain-streams. But
again, after the fresh delight of one of these country-walks, he would
reproach himself that he had left the more beaten ways and the crowded
cars, where he might have met Laura.

In passing in one of these from one of the larger towns to another, he met
Caroline, on her bridal tour as Mrs. Gresham.

"You are not gone to Kansas yet?" she asked. "Then you will be able to
come and visit us in Newport this summer. I assure you, you will find
cottage-life there far more romantic than log-cabin life."

Of course he found success at last. It was just as summer was beginning to
wane, but when in September she was putting on some of her last glories
and her most fervid heats. He had reached the summit of a hill, then
slowly walked down its slope, as he admired the landscape that revealed
itself to him. He saw, far away among the hills in the horizon, the town
towards which he was bound. The sunset was gathering brilliant colors over
the sky; hills and meadows were bathed in a soft light. He stopped in
front of a house that was separated from the road by a soft green of
clover. By the gate there was a seat, on which he sat down to rest. It was
all that was left of a great elm that some Vandal of the last generation
had cut away. Nature had meanwhile been doing her best to make amends for
the great damage. Soft mosses nestled over the broad, mutilated stump, the
rains of years had washed out the freshness of its scar, vines wound
themselves around, dandelions stretched their broad yellow shields above,
and falling leaves rested there to form a carpet over it.

As Arnold, tired with his da