“Course I know the chile walked. I reckon she’ll hev stone-bruises a plenty arter this,--full twelve mile. But what put it inter her head ter kem? She ’lowed ter me she ain’t dreamed o’ nuthin’, ’ceptin’ Spot hed a new calf, which she ain’t got. Reckon ’twar a leadin’ or a warnin’ or”-- “I reckon ’twar homesickness. Young gals always pine fur home, special ef thar ain’t nuthin’ spry goin’ on in a new place.” And once more Jane Ann Sims, in the plenitude of her triumph, chuckled. It chanced, that afternoon, that when the red sunset was aflare over the bronze-green slopes that encircled the Cove, and the great pine near at hand began to sway and to sing and to cast forth the rich benison of its aroma to the fresh rain-swept air, the juggler roused himself, pushed back his hat from his eyes, and gazed with listless melancholy about him. Somehow the sweet peace of the secluded place appealed to his world-weary senses. The sounds,--the distant, mellow lowing of the kine, homeward wending; the tinkle of a sheep-bell; the rhythmic dash of the river; the ecstatic cadenzas of a mocking-bird, so intricate, delivered with such dashing _élan_, so marvelously clear and sweet and high as to give an effect as of glitter,--all were so harmoniously bucolic. He was soothed in a measure, or dulled, as he drew a long sigh of relief and surcease of pain, and began to experience that facile renewal of interest common to youth with all its recuperative faculties. It fights a valiant fight with sorrow or trouble, and only the years conquer it at last. For the first time he noted among the budding willows far down the stream a roof all aslant, which he divined at once was the mill. He rose to his feet with a quickening curiosity. As he released the futile fishing-rod and wound up the line he remarked the unbaited hook. His face changed abruptly with the thought of his absorption and trouble. He pitied himself. The road down which he took his way described many a curve seeking to obviate the precipitousness of the descent. The rocks rose high on either side for a time, and when the scene beyond broke upon him in its entirety it was as if a curtain were suddenly lifted. How shadowy, how fragrant the budding woods above the calm and lustrous water! The mill, its walls canted askew, dark and soaked with the rain, and its mossy roof awry, was sombre and silent. Over the dam the water fell in an unbroken crystal sheet so smooth and languorous that it seemed motionless, as if under a spell. Ferns were thick on a marshy slope opposite, where scattered boulders lay, and one quivering blossomy bough of a dogwood-tree leaned over its white reflection in the water, fairer than itself, like some fond memory embellishing the thing it images.