The moon mounted into the heavens, pushing aside the aspiring clouds which sought to dispute her passage, then clothing them in her own livery of light, and drawing them upward after her, in a glittering train of attendance. All over the hill-side the calm radiance rested. The gay hues with which autumn’s day brush painted the woods, the hedge rows, the long stretches of orchard, stubble, and field, sought now to only hint at their beauty, as they yielded new outlines, mystic suggestions of form and color, in the soft gray picture of mezzotint. Thin films of vapor rose to enwrap the feet of the dark firs, nearer to the sky, and in the valley below the silver of the moonlight lost itself on the frost-like whiteness of the gathering mist. It was a night for the young to walk together, and read love’s purest, happiest thoughts in each other’s eyes--for the old to drink in with thankful confession the faith that the world was still gracious and good. Milton was walking the mare now, still on the grass. He could hear the sound of wheels, just ahead. CHAPTER XXII.--THE NIGHT: THE LOVERS. Seth had gone up to his room in a state of wretchedness which, seeming insupportable at the outset, had grown steadily worse upon reflection. He said to himself that he had never before in his whole life been so humiliated and unhappy, and then smiled with pitying contempt for the inadequacy of such a statement of the case. One’s career must have been titanic in its tragic experiences to warrant such a comparison. “I have never known before what suffering was,” he thought, as he paced up and down his little room, scourging himself with the lash of bitter reflections.