"Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden was located right here. It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere. Are you sure you don't know when he'll come back to see us all?" Aunt Mary's blue eyes danced with merriment. "No," I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to herself, "Well, Silas _did_ say--" All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts behind Bud's hoe and refused even to think about Bess's wedding-chest. But at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed back from her--or have a serious crisis in our friendship. I hadn't strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't, though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom. "Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here in the dark and not make me say a word?" I asked him as he brought me home in the after-midnight hush. "You've trained my heart into silence, Ann," he answered gently. "No!" I exclaimed, for I couldn't bear the thought of Matthew's big heart being silent too. Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat, fell off and had to be rescued. We put her out at home in a wilted condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest. An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was quiet and well. "Why, what's the matter?" I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided. "Strike your cigar-lighter quick, Matt." As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank to my knees with a cry. There upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat. As I lifted it on my arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that I knew it was dead. Mother Ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as she came to my side. "Oh," I sobbed as I looked up at Matthew, "it's dead. What did it?" "A dog," answered Matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead lamb back on the ground. "Not Peckerwood Pup!" I exclaimed. "No, she's too young; some stray," answered Matthew as he look savagely around into the shadows.