Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14575-h.htm or 14575-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14575/14575-h/14575-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14575/14575-h.zip) BYLOW HILL by GEORGE W. CABLE With Illustrations by F. C. Yohn Charles Scribner's Sons New York MCMII [Illustration: "Father," laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?"] CONTENTS I. RUTH AND GODFREY II. ISABEL III. ARTHUR AND LEONARD IV. AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER V. SKY AND POOL VI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE VII. THE HOUR STRIKES VIII. GIVE YOU FIVE MINUTES IX. THE YOUNG YEAR SMILES X. THE STORM REGATHERS XI. HAS IT COME TO THIS? XII. THE LANTERN QUENCHED XIII. BABY XIV. THE TALKATIVE LEONARD XV. THE THIN ICE BREAKS XVI. MUST GIVE YOU UP XVII. SLEEP, OF A SORT XVIII. MISSING XIX. A DOUBLE STILL HUNT XX. A DOUBLE RETURN XXI. EVENING RED XXII. MORNING GRAY ILLUSTRATIONS "Father," laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?" (Frontispiece) Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair. "Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes." "But to know every day and hour that I'm watched." "I am waiting busily for her slayer." "Arthur! Arthur! can't you speak?" I RUTH AND GODFREY The old street, keeping its New England Sabbath afternoon so decently under its majestic elms, was as goodly an example of its sort as the late seventies of the century just gone could show. It lay along a north-and-south ridge, between a number of aged and unsmiling cottages, fronting on cinder sidewalks, and alternating irregularly with about as many larger homesteads that sat back in their well-shaded gardens with kindlier dignity and not so grim a self-assertion. Behind, on the west, these gardens dropped swiftly out of sight to a hidden brook, from the farther shore of which rose the great wooded hill whose shelter from the bitter northwest had invited the old Puritan founders to choose the spot for their farming village of one street, with a Byington and a Winslow for their first town officers. In front, eastward, the land declined gently for a half mile or so, covered, by modern prosperity, with a small, stanch town, and bordered by a pretty river winding among meadows of hay and grain. At the northern end, instead of this gentle decline, was a precipitous cliff side, close to whose brow a wooden bench, that ran half-way round a vast sidewalk tree, commanded a view of the valley embracing nearly three-quarters of the compass.