For Posey had yielded herself to the gladness of the day, and in after years it stood apart in her memory. There was the delicious sense of freedom as of a bird escaped from its cage, with that of triumph as the distance widened between her and her late bondage; and in addition the blissful reaction from anxiety, the rest after fatigue, the happiness in her new-found friend, and of trusting confidence in his protecting care and superior knowledge. She had shaken off the past, the future was an unknown quantity, the happy present was enough. For to Posey, whose life had held such a scanty store of pleasure, one continued delight was that long ride in the soft, warm, October sunshine. Through quiet country roads they wound, among fields green with aftermath, and hills rich with October woods. Sometimes these were so near that she could see the ripe leaves dropping softly down like a golden rain, and again distant with all their varied hues of gold and scarlet and crimson and russet blended by the misty autumn haze; but whether near or far always a splendor of color. The cornfields along the way were dotted with great sheaves of the harvested corn, among which the orange spheres of the pumpkins lay thick, and where the huskers were busy stripping the husks from the yellow ears that overflowed baskets and heaped wagons. Orchards, too, there were, fruity with scent of the red-cheeked apples which loaded the trees. Occasionally they met loads of apples on the way to be made into cider. Once they passed a cider mill by the roadside, and stopped for a drink of the sweet juice as it came fresh from the press. At another time they drove under a tree overgrown by a wild grapevine, and Ben, standing on the seat, had gathered his hands full of the little, spicy-flavored, frost grapes. While scattered along the way were clumps of woodbine, its leaves flushed russet crimson; bittersweet with its clustered orange berries beginning to show their scarlet hearts; with lingering sprays of golden rod, and lavender drifts of the wild aster. The farmhouses at which Ben stopped to trade—for he was too faithful an employee to forget his business for any pleasure—had for the most part, it seemed to Posey, a cozy, homelike air, the yards of many gay with fall flowers that the frosts had not yet killed. And how their tongues did run! Ben Pancost had to hear in its fullest detail Posey’s whole story, with especial interest in that part of her life with Madam Atheldena Sharpe. “How many different cities you have seen!” he exclaimed once with an accent of almost envy. “No, I never saw very much of them after all. You see, we always lived in a crowded part, so one was a good deal like another.” “And how did you use to feel when you were pretending to be a spirit?”