Susannah leaned her arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and looked down the slope. His insight into her own trials caused her to sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity. She made an honest effort to assist him to self-analysis. She said, "A great many things come into our minds at times, Mr. Smith, that seem important, but, as you say, if we do not speak about them, afterwards we see that they are silly. Of course with you, if you think some of your thoughts are revelations, it must make you often fancy that the others may be very important too, but it does not follow that they are, and, as you say, time will weed them out if you are trying to do right." She wondered if he would resent her _ifs_. She stood looking down the bank in the short silence that followed, feeling somewhat timorous. The steep ground was covered with the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray teasles which grew to greater height. Through the teasles the white and purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water--rich, soft, vague in outline. At one side, by an old stump, there was a splendid feather, yellow and green, of fading golden rod; yellow butterflies, that looked as if they had dyed their wings in the light reflected from this flower, repeated its gold in glint and gleam over all the gray hillside, shot with the white and the blue. At the foot of the bank lay the flat valley, and from this vantage ground the river could be seen. The soft musical chat of its waters ascended to her ears, and among the huge bronze-leafed nut-trees, whose shelter she had just left, the woodpeckers were tapping and whistling to one another. At length Smith sighed deeply, but without affectation. "Yes, I reckon that's a good deal how it is. It ain't easy, Mrs. Halsey--I hope in your thoughts when judgin' of me you'll always remember that it ain't easy to be a prophet." When he had gone, Susannah found herself laughing, but for Halsey's sake the laughter was akin to tears. CHAPTER III.