In that week of October on a Friday afternoon, when the hazel-brush was as brown-burnished as Abbie’s hair, and the Big Woods a mass of scarlet and bronze and crimson, she closed the schoolhouse and left for home.

In the distance she could see the new, stylish, high-top buggy of Doctor Matthews going down the lane road where the honey-locusts, yellow now, bordered the north side of the Deal place. She was thinking that she could have ridden home with the doctor if she had been out a little earlier. Not that she cared, for it was pleasant walking. Who could believe that the guns of the war were booming in the South this Indian summer day? When nearly home she paused, turned abruptly, and climbing the stake-and-rider fence, walked through the oaks into the clearing where the October sun flecked down through leaf shadows. Not for several years had she visited the old grassy knoll between the huge trees. She went up to the top of the knoll now and faced an invisible audience in that old intangible dream which she always had with her. Half amused at her own childishness, half earnest in her actions, there in the seclusion of the woods, she unloosed from its binding ribbons the reddish-brown mass of her hair. She unbuttoned the top buttons of her lavender-sprigged delaine dress and pulled it down over the creamy whiteness of her shoulders, tucking in the edges to hold it. Then, with her reddish-bronze hair, with its overtones of gold, framing the Mayflower petals of her skin, and with her warm brown eyes half closed, Abbie Mackenzie threw back her head and sang:

“Oh, the Lady of the Lea,

Fair and young and gay was she,

Beautiful exceedingly,

The Lady of the Lea.”

The notes rose like the nuptial flight of birds, notes of desire and a longing for their fulfillment.

“To her bower at last there came,

A youthful knight of noble name,

Hand and heart in hope to claim

And in love fell she.”

They throbbed with the joy of life and the pathos of it, with the beauty of peace and the sadness of war.

“Still she put his suit aside,

So he left her in her pride,

And broken-hearted drooped and died,

The Lady—”

A twig snapped and the note snapped with it. Frightened, Abbie whirled to the sound. Ed Matthews stood near her, his blond face aflame. Abbie gave a startled cry, and in fright and embarrassment, clutched the neck of her gown. But Ed Matthews had her in his arms, was kissing her full red lips and the creamy Mayflower petals of her neck, burying his flushed face in the red-bronze of her hair.

“Abbie, . . . Abbie, . . . you coquette! . . . You’re wonderful, . . . gorgeous. I love you. I never knew . . . I want you. . . . You’re going with me. . . . You’ll marry me. . . . I’ll take you east . . . to New York. . . . Your voice . . . I didn’t realize . . . You can have the best teachers . . . I have to go back to-morrow . . . Abbie . . . you coquette . . . ! And we have to-night left . . . to-night is ours . . .”