before the sun's level rays lighted up a scene that was full of joyous activity and bustle. The children's happy voices made the echoes ring, and Fred Hargrove, notwithstanding his city antecedents, yielded with delight to the love of primitive life that exists in every boy's heart. Although he was a few years older than Alf, they had become friendly rivals as incipient sportsmen and naturalists. Amy felt that she was coming close to nature's heart, and the novelty of it all was scarcely less exciting to her than to Johnnie. To little Ned it was a place of wonder and enchantment, and he kept them all in a mild state of terror by his exploring expeditions. At last his father threatened to take him home, and, with this awful punishment before his eyes, he put his thumb in his mouth, perched upon a rock, and philosophically watched the preparations for supper. Maggie was the presiding genius of the occasion, and looked like the light-hearted girl that Leonard had wooed more than a dozen years before. She ordered him around, jested with him, and laughed at him in such a piquant way that Burt declared she was proving herself unfit for the duties of chaperon by getting up a flirtation with her husband. Meanwhile, under her supervision, order was evoked from chaos, and appetizing odors arose from the fireplace. Miss Hargrove admitted to herself that in all the past she had never known such hours of keen enjoyment, and she was bent on proving that, although a city-bred girl, she could take her part in the work as well as in the fun. Nor were her spirits dampened by the fact that Burt was often at her side, and that Amy did not appear to care. The latter, however, was becoming aware of his deepening interesting in her brilliant friend. As yet she was not sure whether it was more than a good-natured and hospitable effort to make one so recently a stranger at home with them, or a new lapse on his part into a condition of ever-enduring love and constancy--and the smile that followed the thought was not flattering to Burt. A little before supper was ready Maggie asked him to get a pail of water. "Come, Miss Gertrude," he said, "and I'll show you the Continental spring at which the Revolutionary soldiers drank more than a hundred years ago;" and she tripped away with him, nothing loth. As they reappeared, flushed and laughing, carrying the pail between them, Amy trilled out, "Jack and Jill came up the hill." A moment later, Webb followed them, on horseback, and was greeted with acclamations and overwhelmed with compliments. Miss Hargrove was only too glad of the diversion from herself, for Amy's words had made her absurdly conscious for a society girl.