"I have lived a thousand years in America," was Moreton's response. "Every hour has been a decade. I never felt a genuine sentiment before I came here. You must pardon me if I arrogate to myself the right to speak patronizingly to one who has only been here thirty or thirty-five years." "I see how it is," said Reynolds. "The same old story. Another sweetheart. You had four in Paris, three in Rome, two in Geneva, two in----" "Oh, come now, none of that," Moreton exclaimed with an impatient gesture. "For once and forever I am in earnest, don't you know. I mean to marry Miss Noble." "I am heartily glad of it," said Reynolds, grasping his friend's hand. "I cordially congratulate you, Moreton. What a sweet, bright, perfectly natural girl she is! I honor you all the more for your choice." As they walked on to the hotel, Reynolds was thinking what a fair outcome this marriage would be to Moreton's rather adventuresome bachelor career. He did not dare figure for himself any thing so happy, but his imagination was full of floating, rosy fantasies, formless as yet, but ready to take almost any shape of beauty, grace or passion. He felt a quicker movement of his blood, he breathed deeper, a wider horizon seemed open to him all at once. He dared not try to analyze his state of feeling, lest the test should dissipate it. Like some mere stripling just fallen in love, he heard all through his dreams that night a sweet, strange voice singing that light stanza of Moreton's song: "The light of her eyes And the dew of her lips, Where the moth never flies And the bee never sips." CHAPTER VI. AT THE GATE. Reynolds started to go on foot to White's cabin among the mountains. His immediate purpose was to arrange for sending his dogs down to Birmingham in a few days, in order that they might be ready for the trip to General DeKay's. He was glad of this excuse for getting away for a time from the town, out into the woods, where he might try to understand himself; for he was in a mood very different from any he had experienced in the last six years, and in fact very different from any he ever before had realized. Since the evening of Mr. Noble's dinner a change had been going on within him. It was as if some reservoir of feeling, hitherto sealed up, had been tapped, from which a rare sensation had diffused itself throughout his being, mildly thrilling his nerves and vaguely firing his blood. He could trace this change to no definite source, nor could he be sure whether it tended toward some new and brighter phase of his variable life, or toward some lurking evil. He felt the pressure of a doubtful presentiment, as all strongly imaginative natures at times do, and in the midst of a vivid sense of pleasure there hovered a dim shadow of dread.