A breeze wandered up the river and touched the leaves and grass to life. The young corn, deep green in the bottom-land, moved with a [v]staccato flurry; the stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, lying like square coverlets on the long slope of rising ground beyond the bottom-land, and empurpled the blue woodland shadows of the groves. For the first time it struck Joe that it was a beautiful day. He opened his eyes and looked about him whimsically. Then he shook his head again. A lady had just emerged from the bridge and was coming toward him. It would be hard to get at Joe's first impressions of her. We can find conveyance for only the broadest and heaviest. At first sight of her, there was preeminently the shock of seeing anything so exquisite in his accustomed world. For she was exquisite; she was that, and much more, from the ivory [v]ferrule of the parasol she carried, to the light and slender foot-print she left in the dust of the road. Joe knew at once that nothing like her had ever before been seen in Canaan. He had little knowledge of the millinery arts, and he needed none to see the harmony of the things she wore. Her dress and hat and gloves and parasol showed a pale lavender overtint like that which he had seen overspreading the western slope. Under the summer hat her very dark hair swept back over the temples with something near trimness in the extent to which it was withheld from being fluffy. It may be that this approach to trimness, after all, was the true key to the mystery of the lady who appeared to Joe. She was to pass him--so he thought--and as she drew nearer, his breath came faster. And then he realized that something wonderful was happening to him. She had stopped directly in front of him; stopped and stood looking at him with her clear eyes. He did not lift his own to her; a great and unaccountable shyness beset him. He had risen and removed his hat, trying not to clear his throat--his everyday sense urging upon him that she was a stranger in Canaan who had lost her way. "Can I--can I--" he stammered, blushing, meaning to finish with "direct you," or "show you the way." Then he looked at her again and saw what seemed to him the strangest sight of life. The lady's eyes had filled with tears--filled and overfilled. "I'll sit here on the log with you," she said. "You don't need to dust it!" she went on, tremulously. And even then he did not know who she was.