addie, beware of the day!
For, dark and despairing, my sight, I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before."

That scared me. I begged Leon to tell, but he wouldn't say a word
more. He went and talked to Miss Amelia as friendly as you please, and
asked her to take a walk in the orchard and get some peaches, and she
went flying. He got her all she could carry and guided her to Peter
and Sally, introduced her to Peter, and then slipped away and left her.
Then he and Sally couldn't talk about their wedding, and Peter couldn't
squeeze her hand, and she couldn't fix his tie, and it was awful.
Shelley and her boys almost laughed themselves sick over it, and then
she cried, "To the rescue!" and started, so they followed. They
captured Miss Amelia and brought her back, and left her with father and
the wonderful book, but I'm sure she liked the orchard better.

I took Grace Greenwood under my arm, Hezekiah on my shoulder, and with
Bobby at my heels went away. I didn't want my hair pulled, or to be
teased that day. There was such a hardness around my heart, and such a
lump in my throat, that I didn't care what happened to me one minute,
and the next I knew I'd slap any one who teased me, if I were sent to
bed for it. As I went down the lane Peter called to me to come and see
him, but I knew exactly how he looked, and didn't propose to make up.
There was not any sense in Sally clawing me all over, when I only tried
to help mother and Lucy find out what they wanted to know so badly. I
went down the hill, crossed the creek on the stepping-stones, and
followed the cowpath into the woods pasture. It ran beside the creek
bank through the spice thicket and blackberry patches, under pawpaw
groves, and beneath giant oaks and elms. Just where the creek turned
at the open pasture, below the church and cemetery, right at the deep
bend, stood the biggest white oak father owned. It was about a tree
exactly like this that an Englishman wrote a beautiful poem in
McGuffey's Sixth, that begins:

"A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
Here's health and renown to his broad green crown,
And his fifty arms so strong."

I knew it was the same, because I counted the arms time and again, and
there were exactly fifty. There was a pawpaw and spice hedge around
three sides o