“Oh, Miss Molly, let’s stay in the ‘beech wood period’ forever! None of us can afford to give up romance or the dear delight of tears for tears’ sake. I love to think of you as a little child playing in the apple orchard, and as a beautiful girl wandering in the woods. But do you know, a still more beautiful picture comes to my inward eye, and that is an old Molly with white hair sitting where you are now, still in the ‘romantic era,’ still in the beech woods; and, God willing, I’ll be beside you, only,” he whimsically added, “I am afraid I’ll be bald-headed instead of white-haired!” CHAPTER VIII.—ALL KINDS OF WEATHER. The days went dreamily on. Edwin Green lengthened his stay in Kentucky until he really became touchy on the subject, and one day when some one spoke of the old Virginia gentleman who came in out of the rain and stayed six years, he told Mrs. Brown that he felt very like that old man. She was hospitality itself, and made him understand that he was more than welcome, and, every time he set a date for his departure, some form of entertainment was immediately on foot where his presence seemed both desirable and necessary, and his going away was postponed again. Once it was a coon hunt with Ernest and John and Lewis, the colored gardener; once it was a moonlight picnic at a wonderful spot called Black Rock. On that occasion they drove in a hay wagon over a road that was a disgrace to Kentucky, and then up a dry creek bed until they came to the great black boulder that stood at least twenty feet in the air; there they made their temporary camp. Kent confided to Professor Green that they never dared to come up that creek bed unless they were sure of clear weather, as it had been known to fill so quickly with a big rain that it drowned a man and horse. It was innocent enough then, with only a thin stream of water trickling along the rocks, sometimes forming a pool where the horses would go in almost to their knees; but, as a rule, they went dry shod along the bed. It was rough riding, but no one minded. There was plenty of hay in the wagon for young bones, and Mrs. Brown, who was chaperoning, had a pillow to sit on and one to lean against. When they got to the sylvan spot every one agreed it was worth the bumping they had undergone. “Oh, it looks like the Doone Valley,” said Judy. And so it did, except that the stream of water was not quite so big as the one John Ridd had to climb up.