She never thought of it nor minded it. She fled on and on like a love-compelled bird, with only one single impulse in her whole being. The measure of freedom is always in proportion to the measure of previous restraint. Persis Buckley had been under a restraint which no maiden in this New England village had ever suffered, and she had gotten from it an impetus for a deed which they would have blushed to think of. She fled on, forcing her way against the wind, which sometimes seemed to meet her like a moving wall, and sometimes like the rushing legions of that Prince of the Powers of the Air of whom she had read in the Bible, making as if they would lift her up bodily and carry her away among them into unknown tumult and darkness. When Persis reached Tabitha Hopkins’s door, she was nearly spent. Her life had not trained her well for a flight in the teeth of the wind. She leaned against the door for a minute faint and gasping. Then she raised the knocker, and it fell with only a slight clang; but directly she heard an inner door open, and a step. Then the door swung back before her, and Darius Hopkins stood there in the dim candle-light shining from the room within. He could not see Persis’s face plainly at first, only her little white hands reaching out to him like a child’s from the gloom. “Who is it?” he asked, doubtfully, and his voice trembled. Persis made a little panting sound that was half a sob. Darius bent forward, peering out. Then he cried out, and caught at those little beseeching hands. “It is not you!” he cried. “It is not you! You have not come to me! It is not you!” Darius Hopkins, scarcely knowing what he did, he was so stirred with joy and triumph and doubt and fear, led Persis into the house and the candle-lit room. Then, when he saw in truth before him that beautiful face which he had worshipped from afar, the young man trembled and fell down upon his knees before Persis as if she were indeed a queen, or an angel who had come to bless him, and kissed her hand. But Persis stood there, trembling and pale, before him, with the tears falling from her wonderful eyes, and her sweet mouth quivering. “Do not let him carry me away,” she pleaded, faintly. Then Darius sprang to his feet and put his arms around her. “Who is it would carry you away?” he said, angrily and tenderly. “No one shall have you. Who is it?” “The--gentleman--from over-seas,” whispered Persis. Her soft wet cheek was pressed against Darius’s. “He has not come?” he questioned, starting fiercely. “No; but--father has dreamed that he will--to-morrow.” Then Darius laughed gayly. “Dreams go by contraries,” he said. “Do not let him carry me away,” Persis pleaded again, and she sobbed on his shoulder, and clung to him. Darius held her more closely. “He shall never carry you away, even if he comes, against your will,” he said. “Do not fear.” “I will go with nobody but you,” whispered Persis in his ear.