One day they sat on the rock ledge until the red glow of the setting sun had nearly faded. Their talk had ceased. The man was sitting below the girl, and she looked down at his head; there were gray hairs here and there. Her lips trembled a little, and she leaned over farther. The rector looked up; he found her face close to his. “Mark,” she began, but he sprang up quickly and held out his hands: “Come, little Ladybird, fly away home!” The girl did not move. “No,” she said. “Sit down. I want to say something to you.” He said again imperatively: “No. Come, Ladybird! It is damp here. It is too near the clouds!” She saw how white his face had grown, and her own flushed; they went down without speaking. After that day the rector became very busy with parish work, and resolutely refused to take any more walks or drives. Guests came to the big house, and after that more guests and more. There was one who came more often than the others, and at the end of the summer the rector watched him drive away with Ladybird. She had come to bid him good-by, but he had basely hidden himself upstairs! During the winter that followed the rectory heard from her but seldom. Rumors came of her engagement; the rumors were denied, then re-affirmed. The old aunt declared that the child would have written at once if they were true; the rector made no comment. In the spring he made some changes in his garden, and when the roses bloomed he busied himself there more than he had ever done before. One warm June day, while he way tying up the swaying branches that bordered his front walk, and thinking of the quaint little red-frocked elf-child who had come to him there years before, she came through the gate and up the walk toward him, her hands outstretched, her face all gladness and youth and beauty. “I’ve come here first,” she cried. “I’ve come to call!” They both laughed, and went in to see the old aunt, the lapse of all the years bridged over between them. She begged to be allowed to stay to tea, and declared the biscuits the most delicious that even the rectory oven had ever baked, and the gooseberry jam as good as ever. After tea she went, uninvited, to the rector’s study. She stood for an instant in the doorway, looking around the familiar room; then she looked up at the man standing beside her, and moved toward the long window. “Come with me to the hedge, old parson,” she called, and before he could answer she flitted through the window and toward the familiar gap. When he reached her side he found her standing with tightly clasped hands. She heard him come, and cried: “Oh, Mark, Mark, what is it? Who put it there?” The rector had no voice to answer her, and after a moment of waiting she turned to him. “Did you put that there? Did you, did you put that there?” Still he made no answer, and with a sob she moved off toward the gate. Then he spoke.