wonderful golden sunsets, and moonlight nights when the street of Poganuc seemed overshot with a silver network of tracery like the arches of some cathedral. The doors and windows of the houses stood innocently open all night for the moon to shine in, and youths and maidens walked and wandered and sentimentalized up and down the long, dewy street, and nobody seemed to know how fast the short, beautiful summer of those regions was passing away. As to Dolly, summer was her time of life and joy; but it was not by any means a joy unmixed. Dolly's education was conducted on the good old-fashioned principle that everyone must do his little part in the battle of life, and that nobody was pretty enough or good enough to be kept merely for ornamental purposes. She was no curled darling, to be kept on exhibition in white dresses and broad sashes, and she had been sedulously instructed in the orthodoxy of Dr. Watts, that "Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do." It was the duty of the good house-mother of those days to be so much in advance of this unpleasant personage that there should be no room for his temptations. Accordingly, any part of the numerous household tasks of the Parsonage that could be trusted to a little pair of hands were turned over to Dolly. In those days were none of the thousand conveniences which now abridge the labors of the housekeeper. Everything came in the rough, and had to be reduced to a usable form in the household. The delicate, smooth white salt which filled the cellars at the table was prepared by Dolly's manipulation from coarse rock-salt crystals, which she was taught to wash and dry, and pound and sift, till it became of snowy fineness; and quite a long process it was. Then there were spices to be ground, and there was coffee to be browned to the exact and beautiful shade dear to household ideality; and Dolly could do that. Being a bright, enterprising little body, she did not so much object to these processes, which rather interested her, but her very soul was wearied within her at the drill of the long and varied sewing lessons that were deemed indispensable to her complete education. Pounding salt, or grinding spice, or beating eggs, or roasting coffee, were endurable; but darning stockings and stitching wristbands, and "scratching" gathers, were a weariness unto her spirit. And yet it was only at the price of penances like these, well and truly performed, that Dolly's golden _own_ hours of leisure were given. Most of her household tasks could be performed in the early morning hours before school, and after school Dolly measured the height of the afternoon sun with an avaricious eye. Would there be time enough to explore the woody hills beyond Poganuc River before sundown? and would they let her go?