The young girls cast glances, bolder from the darkness, towards his stately ash-colored shoulders and the pale gleam of his face. Not one of them who had not her own lover but had her innocent secret dreams about this Isaac Penfield. Now, had a light shone out suddenly in the darkness, their dreams would have shown in their faces. One slender girl slunk softly around in the rear darkness and crept so close to Isaac Penfield that his ash-colored cloak, swinging out in the wind, brushed her cheek. He did not notice her; indeed, after his first murmur of salutation, he did not speak to any one. They all went in silence down the hill, and flocked into the yard of the Lennox house. There was a red flicker of light in the kitchen windows from the great hearth fire, but a circle of dark heads and shoulders hid the fire itself from the new-comers. There was evidently a number of people inside. Deacon Scranton raised the knocker, and the door was opened immediately. Melissa Lennox stood there holding a candle in a brass candlestick, with the soft light streaming up on her fair face. She looked through it with innocent, anxious blue eyes at the company. “Won’t you walk in?” she said, tremulously, and the people passed into the south entry, and through the door on the left into the great Lennox kitchen. Some dozen persons who had come from the other end of the village were already there. Isaac Penfield entered last. Melissa did not see him until he stepped suddenly within her radius of candle-light. Then she started, and bent her head before him, blushing. The candle shook in her outstretched hand. Isaac Penfield took the candle without a word and set it on the stairs. Then he took Melissa’s slim right hand in his, and stood a moment looking down at her bent head, with its parted gloss of hair. His forehead was frowning, and yet he half smiled with tender triumph. “Come out in the front yard with me a moment,” he whispered. He pulled her with gentle force towards the door, and the girl yielded, after a faint murmur of expostulation. Out in the front yard Isaac Penfield folded a corner of his ash-colored cloak around Melissa’s slender shoulders. “Now I want you to tell me, Melissa,” he whispered. “You are not still carried away by all this?” He jerked his head towards the kitchen windows. Melissa trembled against the young man’s side under the folds of his cloak. “You are not, after all I said to you, Melissa?” She nodded against his breast, with a faint sob. “I hoped you would do as I asked you, and cut loose from this folly,” Isaac Penfield said, sternly. “Father--says--it’s true. Oh, I am afraid--I am afraid! My sins are so great, and I cannot hide from the eyes of the Lord. I am afraid!” Isaac Penfield tightened his clasp of the girl’s trembling figure, and bent his head low down over hers. “Melissa, dear, can’t you listen to me?” he whispered. Suddenly the kitchen door opened, and a new light streamed across the entry.