He put on his coat, and strode briskly out of the forge and up the hill. They could hear him whistling a long way. Before he had reached Eli Strobe’s cabin, however, the blithe tones were checked. He in his turn heard music,—a vague, fitful lilting; now striking out with some full, rich tone, then trailing away to a meditative murmur, as if the lips whence it issued were closed save for this dream of a sound. He looked about for a moment, uncertain in the silence; and then the song came again, clear and serene, and mellow as the day itself, seeming a part of the fine and full culminations that the yellow sunshine, and the violet haze, and the deeply blue sky, and the calm of the season expressed. It was Marcella, singing like a dryad in the woods, fragments and fitful impulses stirring the sylvan solitudes with sweet and vagrant accords, and making the echo timorous to try so elusive a strain. XIV. Clem Sanders turned aside into the woods, following the sound. The sere leaves rustled under his feet; the vistas seemed to be clarified by their pure, fine brown color; now and then a dash of the bolder red or yellow of the foliage, still hanging on the trees, served at once to accent it and as a contrast. The boles were dark, and stood out distinctly, apparently innumerable. He did not see her; he waited, listening, but she sang no more, and he pressed forward without even this variant and uncertain guide. There was much fallen timber here and there, victims of the late storm, the leaves still clinging to their limbs; sometimes a sturdy neighbor had caught the smitten tree, and still stood, upbearing the dead bulk, its own doom certain but slow in the weight of its lifeless burden; and here was one whose fall had wrought at once complete devastation,—the giant of the forest hurled to the ground in a single blast, the roots torn from the earth; the topmost fibres of these clay-embedded roots were higher than the saplings hard by; a deep excavation showed where they had once been buried. Suddenly a hound clambered out of this cavity, nosing about with occasional wheezes, evidently bent on small game. “I’ll be bound Andy Longwood didn’t let ye run rabbits whenst _he_ owned ye,” even the lenient blacksmith was moved to observe, marking this lapse from the accepted traditions of the etiquette of deerhounds. He welcomed the sight of him, however, as the herald of Marcella, and presently he saw her sitting quite still on the bole of a fallen tree, her head bare, flecked with the sunshine as the leaves stirred above her, one hand listlessly clasping the bough near by, and the other holding a bunch of herbs which Mrs. Strobe had charged her to seek; a basket of eggs was at her feet. As she looked up and saw Clem coming toward her, his heart sank, so serene, and casual, and unmoved was her glance. He had not doubted his good fortune since the first stupendous moment of its revelation, but now he recognized the