e
of the leaf,--waiting only for the hundred years of its shrouding to be
over!

Miss Craydocke never came in from the woods and rocks without her
trophies. Rare, lovely mosses and bits of most delicate ferns,
maidenhair and lady-bracken, tiny trails of wintergreen and arbutus,
filled a great shallow Indian china dish upon her bureau top, and grew,
in their fairy fashion, in the clear, soft water she kept them freshened
with.

Shining scraps of mountain minerals--garnets and bright-tinted quartz
and beryls, heaped artistically, rather than scientifically, on a base
of jasper and malachite and dark basalt and glistening spar and curious
fossils; these not gathered by any means in a single summer or in
ordinary ramblings, but treasured long, and standing, some of them, for
friendly memories--balanced on the one side a like grouping of shells
and corals and sea-mosses on the other, upon a broad bracket-mantel put
up over a little corner fireplace; for Miss Craydocke's room, joining
the main house, took the benefit of one of its old chimneys.

Above or about the pictures lay mossy, gnarled, and twisted branches,
gray and green, framing them in a forest arabesque; and great pine
cones, pendent from their boughs, crowned and canopied the mirror.

"What _do_ you keep your kindling wood up there for?" Sin Saxon had
asked, with a grave, puzzled face, coming in, for pure mischief, on one
of her frequent and ingenious errands.

"Why, where should I put a pile of wood or a basket? There's no room
for things to lie round here; you have to hang everything up!" was Miss
Craydocke's answer, quick as a flash, her eyes twinkling comically with
appreciation of the fun.

And Sin Saxon had gone away and told the girls that the old lady knew
how to feather her nest better than any of them, and was sharp enough at
a peck, too, upon occasion.

She found her again, one morning, sitting in the midst of a pile of
homespun, which she was cutting up with great shears into boys' blouses.

"There! that's the noise that has disturbed me so!" cried the girl. "I
thought it was a hay-cutter or a planing-machine, or that you had got
the asthma awfully. I couldn't write my letter for listening to it, and
came round to ask what _was_ the matter!--Miss Craydocke, I don't see
why you keep the door bolted on your side. It isn't any more fair for
you than for me; and I'm sure I do all the visiting. Besides, it's
dangerous. What if anything should happ