Her eyes quickly gathered in the stillness of the sunny slopes that rose from the darker hollow in squares of yellow cornfields, or the light green of unripe wheat or grain, and the brown of mountain meadow-land, dotted with browsing cows. Here and there a lone farmhouse stood forth on some higher knoll, or, from a background of forest land, came the bright red of a solitary barn; while still higher, a hotel, its gables and chimneys spying upward, glimmered picturesquely from the green. And beyond all, high and dark, with majestic brooding silences, rose the jagged ridge of mountain blue, its peaks looming with a strange distinctness against the clear, soft blue of the sky, while sweeps of white cloudlets trailed like films of spun silk across their tops. The girl closed her eyes as if to imprint upon her subconsciousness the rare loveliness of the scene, and then, as if fearful that in some passing, whimsical mood the picture would flash out of view, she opened them quickly. At that moment a passing breeze fluttered the pages of a letter lying on a table by her side. With sudden recollection she caught them up, and then as if to impress upon her mind what she had written, in a soft, low tone read: “Dear Helen: “I presume you are now in glorious _La France_, wondering why you have not heard from me. But my excuse is this magnificent mountain scenery, and my new duties, which have taken every minute of my time until to-day. We came up on the fifteenth from New York. Mother knitted and read during the ten-hour ride, while I wished inexpressibly good things for Mrs. Van Vorst for renting our little dovecote, and planned liberty work. I have decided to adopt the club’s motto, ‘Liberty and Humanity—our best,’ for the summer’s watchword. As it means to try and be helpful and kind to people, whether I like them or not, wish me success, for I have undertaken something big. “Mr. Banker, my aunt’s lawyer, met us at the Littleton station with his car. He is a tall, lean man, but his brown eyes have a quizzical gleam in them that makes you feel that you are affording him some amusement. The seven-mile ride up one mountain slope and down another, in the shade of the woods that gloomed dark and weird on each side of the road, with the hush of the gloaming in their moist depths, was most enjoyable. “From out of their rustling shadows the white birches and poplars peered at us like ghosts, while the resinous aroma from the pines made us sniff with delight. Mountain villages with a straggle of white cottages, and grizzly gray churches in a setting of purple mountain-peaks, strangely somber and still, as they stood forth from feathery masses of clouds tinted with sunset’s glow, with gossamer wreaths of mist floating above them, stilled us to a mute ecstasy of sheer joy.