Eight years previous her parents had gladly parted with her, and they now as gladly welcomed her back; her sisters were all married, and the old people quite alone, so that her presence was as the light of morning to their lonely fireside. Her city life had by no means spoiled Linda for the pleasures of the country; she felt like a bird who, after being caged a weary time, is suddenly permitted to flit at freedom amid its native bowers. Linda retained a vivid impression of the early scenes of her childhood, and as she again revisited each nook and dell, the remembrance of her kind friend, Paul, also came back to her, and the present seemed incomplete without him whose tender care and ever ready invention to amuse her waywardness, had cast such brightness over the days of infancy. Where was he now? Had he forgotten her? She thought of him as she had seen him when he so suddenly appeared before her—those deep, tender eyes, regarding her with so much respect and affection; and then, when admitted into the stately dwelling of her uncle, he had come forward so modestly, yet with so much self-respect to greet her, and her heart reproached her, that, through fear of her aunt’s displeasure, she had, perhaps, treated him coldly. “But, dear Paul, I am sure I did not mean to be unkind!” she mentally exclaimed. Ah, if Paul, as he sat in his office in that narrow, confined street, bending so diligently over his desk, in the sultry breath of the city, could have known the thoughts of the fair girl, as she strolled through the summer woods, what rapture would have thrilled his bosom, and how would the dull atmosphere in which he toiled have become irradiate in the light of love and happiness. Has the reader forgotten Apollos—the Apollo—the Paganini, whose witched fiddle-bow made both echoes and babies shriek in concert? It chanced one evening that Apollos, out of resin, set forth for the village to supply that dire necessity. Whistling he went, when suddenly there were borne to his ear strains of most ravishing sweetness, now softly swelling on the evening breeze—now fainter and fainter dying away until even silence seemed musical, and then again bursting forth so free and joyous, that the very air around him vibrated with melody. Spell bound stood Apollos. The doors of his great ears swung back to welcome in the harmony, and his mouth, too, opened as if to swallow it. Then, led on as it were by invisible spirits, his feet followed the bewitching sounds, and planted themselves under the large button-ball tree which stood near the window where Linda was thus unconsciously drawing both soul and body of Apollos magnetically unto her.