"It's not--where I can be happiest, Phil; I don't ask myself that question; I fear I never can";--and her lips trembled as she said it. "You can,--you ought," burst out Phil, fired at sight of her emotion, and would have gone on bravely and gallantly, may be, with the passion that was surging in him, if a look of hers and a warning finger had not stayed him. "We'll talk no more of this, Phil"; and her lips were as firm as iron now. Both of them serious and silent for a while; until at length Adele, in quite her old manner, says: "Of course, Phil, father may bring me to America again some day; and if so, I shall certainly beg for a little visit in Ashfield. It would be very ungrateful in me not to remember the pleasant times I've had here." But Phil cannot so deftly change the color of his talk; his chattiness has all gone from him. Nor does it revive on reaching home. Good Mrs. Elderkin says, "What makes you so crusty, Phil?" LX. Maverick arrives, as he had promised to do, some time in early July; comes up from the city without announcing himself in advance; and, leaving the old coach, which still makes its periodical trips from the river, a mile out from the town, strolls along the highway. He remembers well the old outline of the hills; and the straggling hedge-rows, the scattered granite boulders, the whistling of a quail from a near fence in the meadow, all recall the old scenes which he knew in boyhood. At a solitary house by the wayside a flaxen-haired youngster is blowing off soap-bubbles into the air,--with obstreperous glee whenever one rises above the house-tops,--while the mother, with arms akimbo, looks admiringly from the open window. It was the home to which the feet of Adele had latterly so often wandered. Maverick is anxious for a word with the Doctor before his interview with Adele even. He does not know her present home; but he is sure he can recall the old parsonage, in whose exterior, indeed, there have been no changes for years. The shade of the embowering elms is grateful as he strolls on into the main street of the town. It is early afternoon, and there are few passers-by. Here and there a blind is coyly turned, and a sly glance cast upon the stranger. A trio of school-boys look wonderingly at his foreign air and dress. A few loiterers upon the tavern steps--instructed, doubtless, by the stage-driver, who has duly delivered his portmanteau--remark upon him as he passes.