“And change my boots? No,” and Irene laughed merrily. “I shall be gone no time, and we can easily overtake the others. Tell them not to wait.” She was off like the wind, and when, as we missed the sound of her voice, we looked around, she was not to be seen, and Reginald was sitting alone on a flat boulder at the side of the lane. “What has happened?” Tom said. “What’s the matter? Where’s Irene?” “She found the grass too wet and has gone to change her shoes,” was the reply, as Reginald arose and came toward us. Just then Irene came flying down the lane, looking disconcerted when she saw that we were waiting for her, thus spoiling her little manœuvre to keep Reginald to herself far behind us. “Had to change your shoes for fear of taking cold, did you?” Tom said, as she came up. “I thought you never took cold.” “Nor do I,” Irene answered. “It was not a cold I feared; it was spoiling my boots. They were nearly soaked. All the science in the world couldn’t keep them dry.” She was holding her white skirts above the tops of her boots, which looked much like the pair she had declared drenched with the dew which lay so heavy upon the grass. “Didn’t take you long to change them,” Tom said dryly, with a look Irene understood and hated him for. Her plan had failed, and there was nothing to do but keep with us until the grove was reached. The moon had risen higher by this time and was casting broad bars of light upon the trees and ground, and the well, which Irene spied first, and darting toward it, exclaimed: “So, this is the charmed well where Nannie drowned herself, and into which foolish young people look, hoping to see their future mates. I wonder if I could see mine by moonlight.” And standing on the projecting stone she bent forward and looked into the well, while Rena called: “Come away, Irene. You will certainly fall in.” “Suppose I do, who would go in after me, I wonder,” Irene answered with a laugh, and Tom replied: “I suppose I’d have to, but I don’t crave the job. I should get my shoes wet, too. Come away, Irene.” She didn’t move, except to straighten herself up and turn her face toward us and up to the moonlight; and such a beautiful face it was, and such a lovely picture she made, standing over that dark water into which she might at any moment fall, for the stones were wet and slippery with the dew. “Is she crazy as Nannie must have been when she threw herself into that well?” Reginald thought. She was a distant relative of Nannie, there might be a taint of insanity in her blood, and it was his duty to interfere. Going up to her and taking her hand, he said authoritatively, rather than entreatingly: “Come away, Miss Burdick. You make us all very nervous. Come with me.”