The March days came hurrying on—gray and wind-blown and showery—but rather merry for all that. All signs bore tokens of an early spring. A flock of geese had already gone over, crows were flapping across St. Helen’s snow-freed meadow, and robins and song-sparrows felt quite at home. There was a misty, indistinct blur in the tops of the maple trees, quite as though wet buds were swelling. Under the pine trees by the Retreat, tiny, furry heads were peeping above the needles, hepaticas just awakening. The waters of the brook, freed from ice, tore boisterously through the meadow; and along its weedy edges the water-rats, having left their tunnels in the banks, scurried on secret, silent errands. Everywhere there was a strange fragrance of freshly-washed things—soft brown earth, buds ready to burst, tender shoots of plants. Yes, spring was unmistakably near, and the St. Helen’s girls were ready for its coming. It was on a Saturday afternoon, the last in March, that Virginia walked alone down the hill, through the pine woods, and across the road to the pastures and woodlands opposite. She would have loved company, but Priscilla, Lucile, and the Blackmore twins were playing tennis finals in the gym, the Seniors were enjoying an afternoon tea, Vivian was nowhere to be found, and, in the hope of persuading Dorothy to go with her, she had again interrupted a secret conference between Dorothy and Imogene, which conferences, to the watchful and troubled Vigilantes, were becoming more and more frequent. The whole campus seemed deserted, she thought, as she started from The Hermitage. Perhaps, the opening of the “Forget-me-not” soda fountain—another sign of spring—accounted for that. It was wet underfoot and gray overhead, but she did not mind. She was bound for the pastures on the other side of the road leading to Hillcrest, for there Miss Wallace had said she might even this early find the mayflowers of which her mother had so often told her. As she went along, jumping over the little spring brooks and pools in the hollows, she thought of how spring was also coming to her own dear country. Her father’s letter that morning had told her of budding quaking-asps, of red catkins on the cottonwoods, of green foot-hills, and of tiny yellow butter-cups and the little lavender pasque-flowers, which came first of all the spring blossoms. In a few weeks more those foot-hills would be gay with violets and spring beauties, anemones and shooting-stars.