Over on the other side of the island grew the great pines. These had two deeply worn Indian trails leading through them from north to south, not aimless, wandering little paths like those through the arbor vitæ, but one straight track from the village to the western shore, and another leading down to the spring on the beach. The cliffs on whose summit these pines grew were high and precipitous, overlooking deep water; a vessel could have sailed by so near the shore that a pebble thrown from above would have dropped upon her deck. With one arm round an old trunk, Anne often sat on the edge of these cliffs, looking down through the western pass. She had never felt any desire to leave the island, save that sometimes she had vague dreams of the tropics--visions of palm-trees and white lilies, the Pyramids and minarets, as fantastic as her dreams of Shakspeare. But she loved the island and the island trees; she loved the wild larches, the tall spires of the spruces bossed with lighter green, the gray pines, and the rings of the juniper. She had a peculiar feeling about trees. When she was a little girl she used to whisper to them how much she loved them, and even now she felt that they noticed her. Several times since these recent beginnings of care she had turned back and gone over part of the path a second time, because she felt that she had not been as observant as usual of her old friends, and that they would be grieved by the inattention. But this she never told. There was, however, less and less time for walking in the woods; there was much to do at home, and she was faithful in doing it: every spring of the little household machinery felt her hand upon it, keeping it in order. The clothes she made for Tita and the boys, the dinners she provided from scanty materials, the locks and latches she improvised, the paint she mixed and applied, the cheerfulness and spirit with which she labored on day after day, were evidences of a great courage and unselfishness; and if the garments were not always successful as regards shape, nor the dinners always good, she was not disheartened, but bore the fault-findings cheerfully, promising to do better another time. For they all found fault with her, the boys loudly, Tita quietly, but with a calm pertinacity that always gained its little point. Even Miss Lois thought sometimes that Anne was careless, and told her so. For Miss Lois never concealed her light under a bushel. The New England woman believed that household labor held the first place among a woman's duties and privileges; and if the housekeeper spent fourteen hours out of the twenty-four in her task, she was but fulfilling her destiny as her Creator had intended. Anne was careless in the matter of piece-bags, having only two, whereas four, for linen and cotton, colors and black materials, were, as every one knew, absolutely necessary. There was also the systematic halving of sheets and resewing them at the first signs of