One day Julius returned from the nearest large town, where he had been for supplies, with an unusually thoughtful countenance. As soon as his purchases were unloaded and the horse had been attended to, he came in and, drawing a chair beside my work-table, opened the conversation with these memorable words: "Judith, how would you like to go up to Lemonville to live?" "What makes you ask?" questioned I. "It depends altogether on the circumstances how I'd like to live there." "Well, Hawkes bantered me to-day to come up and keep his books for him, and I have been considering it all the way home. It looks like a way out, and I'll declare I don't see any other!" "Go back to office work!" I exclaimed; "I thought you were done with that sort of thing!" "I thought so, too; but after a year of this sort of thing, it begins to look quite different." We sat up late, discussing this plan in all its bearings. Bruno seemed to know that it was a crisis in our affairs, and sat on end facing us, wrinkling his brows and looking from one to the other as each spoke. We finally decided that Julius was to go back to town in a day or two, and investigate further. When Julius returned from Lemonville three days later, he brought us the news that he had promised to give the position a trial, and that he had engaged temporary quarters for us in a new house near the office. Moreover, we were to move up there the following week, as Mr. Hawkes was impatient for his help. While we felt relieved at this decision, there was still something very sad about the breaking up. We had builded so many hopes into our pine-woods home, which had seemed to us to be guarded by a "standing army" of giants carrying silver banners, especially imposing on moonlight nights when the wind kept the banners of moss swaying under the immense pine-trees. We had seen it in imagination blossoming as the rose, a quiet little nest, far from the madding crowd. And now to abandon it at the beginning and go back to village life,--it was leaving poetry for the flattest of prose.