enough. Calista walked a little way into the orchard, then she looked up and down the road.

"Wasn't it Mrs. Albrecht?" she asked. "Well, I guess it makes nothing. Come,

you must go to bed. I stay with you." With a mocking expression she held out her hand as to a very small child, and the little girl walked into the house without a word, not noticing the hand.

When she was asleep Calista came back to the porch with some sewing. Conrad appeared from the barn, stood about for a moment, and strolled toward the orchard; then he walked in the garden for a while; finally he sat on the step with his back to her, saying nothing and looking at the sky. She preserved the silence of a bird-tamer.

"It's a nice evening," he said at last.

"Yes."

"Good weather for hay."

"Yes, fine."

"One field is about ready to cut. You better tell Aunt Hannah to come home. It's too much work for you, with the men to cook for."

"Just you let her stay and enjoy herself. I get along all right."

After a pause she asked, "Did you see some one in the orchard just now?"

"No."

"Mary she ran down after supper, and she said a strange lady was there. I wondered who it was."

"I didn't see her," he said, dully, as

though he spoke from the midst of some absorbing thought; then he got up and walked away. "You better go in and light the lamp if you want to sew," he said, roughly.

Calista took her things and went at once, looking as though she were so well satisfied that she could afford to be amused.

Though in the next two weeks she had plenty of company Conrad never joined them: he spent the evenings with John Albrecht, drove to Bernville, or went to bed early. He worked much harder than usual, and his cheeks grew thin under his stubble of black beard. Calista did not trouble him with conversation.

"Don't you feel good?" she once asked, and when he gave a surly answer she said, carelessly, "You better get something from the doctor," and began to sing immediately afterwards. But she knew how he looked even when her back was turned, and she often stared at Mary in a meditative way as though the child were the doubtful quantity in an important calculation.

She was watching her so one day, when little John Albrecht and his sister had come over and the three were very busy on the grass near the kitchen window

with two dolls and the old tiger-cat. In the afternoon silence their little voices sounded clear and sweet. The cat escaped to a cherry-tree and they chased him gayly, but he went to sleep in an insulting way in spite of the lilac switch that John flourished.

"Look out!" Mary called.

John looked around and said, "For what?" and she went over to him.

There was a conversation which Calista could not hear; Mary pointed several times to a spot in the sunny grass; then he went running down the road and Katie followed, looking as though she would cry when she had time, and leaving her doll behind her.

Calista went out. "What did you say to John to make them run off?" she asked.

"I told him to look out, he would hit the lady with the switch."

"What lady?"

"She was there."

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know."

"Can't you see her?"

"No, ma'am."

Calista looked all about. Not a soul was in sight on the road; in the orchard and the fields nothing moved but the wind; the yard was empty except for the

cat slipping round the corner with his mottled coat shining. "Now listen," she said, not unkindly. "I saw you out of the window, and there was no lady here. Why do you tell a story like that?"

The child looked at her in a preoccupied way and did not answer.

"I can't have you say things that are not so, Mary. If you do it again, I have to whip you. Now pick up your doll-baby and come in."

She spoke of it to Conrad that evening, but he did not pay much attention.

"I don't know if there is something wrong with Mary or, if she does see some one, who it is," she said. "Do you know if there are gipsies around?" He scarcely answered, and in a few minutes she heard him drive down the road. She smiled to herself as she hurried through her work. Then she put Mary to bed, though it was much earlier than usual, and began to dress, while the little girl lay watching from among the pillows.

Calista enjoyed the water like a sleek creature of two elements; her white skirts crackled and flared; her hair hid her waist. When she had finished her green dimity looked like foliage around a flower, and her hazel eyes turned green to match it.

"I'm going on the front porch," she said. "You go to sleep like a good girl."

She had sat with Mary in the evening as long as she could do so without inconvenience. Now she saw no reason for continuing it. She had not imagination enough to know what she was inflicting. Mary gazed after her as a shipwrecked woman might watch a plank drifting out of reach, but she said nothing; she shut her eyes and lay still for many minutes. She was a timid child but not cowardly, and such tangible things as a cross dog, a tramp, and a blacksnake in the orchard she had faced bravely, but her terror of the dark was indefinite and unendurable. She opened her eyes, shut them, and opened them again, looking for something dreadful. The furniture was shapeless, the bedclothes dimly white, and each time she looked it was darker. She did not know what she expected, and to see nothing was almost worse. A carriage going down the road comforted her as long as she could hear it, but it left a thicker silence. She pressed her lids together, breathing quickly,—to move was like inviting something to spring on her,—then she slid out of bed and ran down the stairs, gave a frightened glance at the front door behind which sat her aunt,

who would send her up again, and slipped across the back porch into the orchard.

Calista heard nothing. In the hot June evening she was fresh and cool enough to be akin to the rejoicing fields, a nymph of beech or willow. Now and then she looked down the road and saw no one, but she did not seem disappointed. It was quite dark and the fireflies were trailing up and down when wheels stopped at the gate, and she drew back behind a lilac-bush that screened the porch, and sat still.

Conrad, striding up the path, started when he saw her. "Oh, it's you!" he said, coldly. She gave a short answer, and he stood frowning at nothing and looking very tall and black. "Want to take a little ride?" he asked.

"No, I guess not."

"You stay at home too much," he said, presently. "You haven't been off the place since Aunt Hannah left."

"I don't care to go. I can't leave Mary here all alone. It wouldn't be safe."

She stayed silently in her corner as though waiting for him to leave—a white shadow beside the black mass of the lilac-bush. Dolly at the gate tossed her head until the reins scraped on the gate-post. Down in the orchard a whippoorwill cried.

He was like a horse that takes the bit and the driver was his own will—his own self. She made no resistance when he threw himself down beside her: she was pliant, her cheek cool, she even looked at him haughtily. He did not know that she slipped out of his arms just before he would have released her, nor that she was all one flame of triumphant happiness. She seemed as untouched as the starlight.

"Calista," he stammered, "I hope you overlook it."

"What about my sister Mary?" she asked, dryly. "I thought you