It was waxing close upon noon. The shadows had gradually dwindled. The world was so still. The sunshine lay on the splendid slopes in languorous reverie. Here and there some winged thing whisked about in the fine soft radiance, miraculously escaping the frost, or gallantly withstanding it, like certain human antiques, prolonging the sentiment and fervor of a summertide, albeit they cannot stay it. Marcella’s attention pensively followed the airy zigzags of those unconquered wings; the little wheel was still; her hands had fallen passive at last in her lap. Andy was once more meditating departure. He straightened out his limbs as he sat, and he lifted his head and looked about him. The next moment he glanced up at Marcella with an expression of startled, anxious inquiry. Her eyes were already riveted upon the turn-row, where amidst the pallid corn Teck Jepson was slowly coming toward the house. XIII. It was one of those moments charged with the realization of a weighty emergency, when the mind shrinks from the responsibility of discriminating in the crisis, and would fain leave the event to ensue unchecked. Marcella sat as still as if she were merely a figure painted on the pale yellow background of the sere mass of clambering vines that clung to the porch on which the salient coloring of her dark blue dress, the red kerchief about her throat, her brown floating hair, her widely open brown eyes, the fresh flesh tints of her face and hands, stood out with an effect delicate, yet intense. The little rough gray spinning-wheel at her knee was distinctly marked, too, for its humble neutrality of tone was aided by contrast, as well as the ashen brownish hue of the old hound’s head. Perhaps it was the expression of her face, instinct with expectation, that arrested her father’s fluctuating attention. He looked at her, bewildered for a moment; then he turned slowly in his chair, and with his deliberate sidelong glance sought to follow the direction of her eyes.