“Yet you wouldn’t leave the first settlement till you had to,” Agnes reminded her. “We all have our follies,” Polly replied calmly. “Yer no done bein’ foolish yersel’, Nancy.” A remark which Agnes at that moment silently indorsed. The supper over and the table cleared, Parker took from the shelf his flute, and played for them many plaintive airs, so that Agnes’s heartache was made worse instead of better. She sat by her mother on the doorsill, Parker leaning against a tree near by. It seemed as if his melancholy strains were a reproach to her, and she could have wept. Polly, too, felt the spell of the plaintive melodies, and furtively wiped her eyes. Then her strong voice demanded something lively. “We’ll all have the doldrums; it’s worse ‘an a banshee’s wailin’,” she remarked vehemently, and to please her Parker struck up “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning,” which broke the spell and set Polly’s foot to tapping time. Then came the ride to the river which they desired to reach before dark, and this time Agnes sprang up before Polly, taking her mother’s place and declaring that it was but fair that they should change partners, and when they reached the river, though Parker would have rowed them across, they saw Jimmy waiting on the other side, and so their host left them to glide out into the moonlight, and all Agnes had for comfort was a remembrance that to her was given his last hand-clasp as he helped her into the boat, and that she so sat that her back was toward her home, and she could behold him standing there watching, till his figure, a silhouette in the moonlight, was hidden behind the trees. At the hilltop she turned to look once more, but he had gone, and what was silver moonlight or June weather to her? CHAPTER XVII IN ABSENCE