Margaret all this time lived in a waking dream; unknown to herself, all the pent-up forces of her affection had crystallized about this stranger. His natural courtesy seemed to her a gentle personal tribute; the mystery he allowed to surround him (being wholly unconscious of the version of his story the carpenter had told), and his poetic personality, made him seem like some one she had met in an old romance. Then the music, too, for often now in the evening he brought his violin and accompanied her when she sang or played, giving her new understanding, while he corrected the hardness of her method so tactfully that she did not realize it. Lending her new music, substituting the “Songs without Words” for the hackneyed “Airs with Variations,” and teaching her German and Danish ballads, that lent themselves to her rich contralto voice. Margaret became a different creature, and rare glints of red touched her cheeks. The Deacon accounted for this arousing in the pleasure she anticipated in going abroad if the Hill Farm was sold. He was so thoroughly convinced of her indifference to men, that he was blind to the awakening of her heart. Margaret noticed with pleasure the various details and changes in Waldsen’s attic, where she went occasionally to dust, and thought that they betokened contentment. The room was no longer bare, festoons of ground pine hung from the rafters and canopied the windows, a half-dozen home-made cages filled the dormer nearest the stove, and sheltered a collection of wild birds rescued from cold and hunger, which chirped from them merrily, while a little screech-owl blinked sleepily from a perch in the corner. Books lay on the table and filled a rough shelf under the eaves. Writing implements and paper also lay about, and traces of bold, irregular characters were on the big sheets of blotting-paper. It was Andrea’s picture, however, that interested Margaret more than anything. She looked at it day after day, trying to trace a resemblance to Gurth. One day she kissed the lips, and then, suddenly remembering that _he_ might also do this, fled precipitately to her room, and, locking the door, stayed until dark, when she went down to supper with her face flushed, and a nervous air. So nervous was she that her hand trembled until she almost dropped the cup that she was passing to her father. Gurth grasped it, and thus their hands met for the first time. IV