With an unopened roll of newspapers in her hand, Eglah leaned for some moments on the gate, admiring the superb vestments of yellow and red that nature hung out to bar the cold--a small cloud island of ruby near the horizon against which an acacia etched its slender lines, and listening to the song of a mocking-bird, that rose like a flute above the whistle of a partridge astray in feathery broom sedge. On the orchard slope Mrs. Mitchell, basket in hand, groped and peered amid tufts of golden-rod, hunting a belated brood of young turkeys. Eglah passed through the gate, went into the mill, and found a seat on one of the circular grinding stones. The wall had partly fallen on the west side, and the glow of a sinking sun lighted the dusty, cobwebbed rafters that upheld what remained of the roof. The chant of a portion of the stream rolling from mossy rocks to the ruined, sluggish race was low and soothing as a lullaby. It had been a sad day, marking two years since the evening in the library when Judge Kent had been stricken; the beginning of a slow death. Dwelling upon the indelible incidents, an acute pain was added to the chronic ache from which his daughter's heart was never free. While missing her father sorely in her sorrowful isolation, she realized that death had come at the behest of mercy. As long as he lived his enemies could assail him at any moment; now he was comparatively safe under the snow of his native hills. If it were possible to recall him, she would not; she preferred to suffer alone that he might rest in peace. Two days before she had gone for a few hours to Y---- to see in his favorite church the recently completed tall, arched window, ablaze with rose, purple, crimson, and emerald glass, erected by her, "To the glory of God and in memory of Allison Kent." Depressed and heartsick, she often sought the solitude of the mill, but in the grey gloom of the rafters above her head a pair of wrens had dwelt for several seasons, and now resented her presence, twittering their protest. Opening the New York and Boston papers, she glanced over one and laid it aside. Unfolding another, her fingers clutched the sheet, where headlines had been reprinted from an English journal: "RETURN OF THE 'AHVUNGAH.'"