o roll, and
she had to run. Two great wagons with four horses each were being
loaded. Lenore knew all the workmen except one. Silas Warner, an old,
gray-headed farmer, had been with her father as long as she could
remember.

"Whar you goin', lass?" he called, as he halted to wipe his red face
with a huge bandana. "It's too hot to run the way you're a-doin'."

"Oh, Silas, it's a grand morning!" she replied.

"Why, so 'tis! Pitchin' hay hyar made me think it was hot," he said, as
she tripped on. "Now, lass, don't go up to the wheat-fields."

But Lenore heard heedlessly, and she ran on till she came to the uncut
alfalfa, which impeded her progress. A wonderful space of green and
purple stretched away before her, and into it she waded. It came up to
her knees, rich, thick, soft, and redolent of blossom and ripeness. Hard
tramping it soon got to be. She grew hot and breathless, and her legs
ached from the force expended in making progress through the tangled
hay. At last she was almost across the field, far from the cutters, and
here she flung herself, to roll and lie flat and gaze up through the
deep azure of sky, wonderingly, as if to penetrate its secret. And then
she hid her face in the fragrant thickness that seemed to force a
whisper from her.

"I wonder--how will I feel--when I see him--again.... Oh, I wonder!"

The sound of the whispered words, the question, the inevitableness of
something involuntary, proved traitors to her happy dreams, her
assurance, her composure. She tried to burrow under the hay, to hide
from that tremendous bright-blue eye, the sky. Suddenly she lay very
quiet, feeling the strange glow and throb and race of her blood, sensing
the mystery of her body, trying to trace the thrills, to control this
queer, tremulous, internal state. But she found she could not think
clearly; she could only feel. And she gave up trying. It was sweet to
feel.

She rose and went on. Another field lay beyond, a gradual slope, covered
with a new growth of alfalfa. It was a light green--a contrast to the
rich darkness of that behind her. At the end of this field ran a swift
little brook, clear and musical, open to the sky in places, and in
others hidden under flowery banks. Birds sang from invisible coverts; a
quail sent up clear flutelike notes; and a lark caroled, seemingly out
of the sky.

Lenore wet her feet crossing the brook, and, climbing the little knoll
above, she sat down upon a stone to dry them in t