The spirit of joy was resistless. He flung to the winds the last shred of conventional dignity as the coach rolled lazily over the rocky road, throwing them from side to side. "You remember how shocked you were in this same seat, Jim, that day in the sweet long ago when the old coach threw me into your arms?" "Yes, I felt that I was taking a mean advantage of you." "I blushed furiously, didn't I?" "Yes, and I wonder now what your real thoughts were; you don't remember, I suppose?" "As distinctly as though it were yesterday," Nan answered, dreamily. "What did you think of my embarrassment?" "I thought you were an awful fool not to accept more gracefully and thankfully the providence which threw a pretty girl your way." The coach gave a sudden lurch and threw her into Stuart's arms again. "And now?" he cried, laughingly, as he held her firmly for a moment, to prevent her falling. She blushed furiously, threw the ringlets of dark hair from her face and drew back to her position. "Now, of course, it's unlawful," she answered with sober playfulness. The man watched her slyly for the next half-mile. She was very, very quiet. Was he mistaken in the idea that her body had trembled with unusual violence for the moment he had held her? Or was it the quiver of the coach over the gravel in the road and the swaying of their seat? The sense of danger which the little incident roused was only momentary. The scenes through which they were passing were resistless. He caught the odour of crushed violets from the fence corner and the smell of the young grass broken beneath the hoof of a horse; the ploughman was turning at the end of the row. The low music of the river and the panorama of white fleeting clouds across the blue of matchless southern skies, awoke a thousand memories. Again he was a Southern boy. He heard the laughter of big-mouthed, jolly negroes eating watermelons in the shade of great trees and the song of mocking birds in the stillness of summer nights! A rabbit ran across the road and he smiled at the recollection of his first hunt. A quail whistled from the tangle of blackberry briars by the roadside. He looked quickly and saw the bob white sitting on the top rail of the old worn fence. He seized Nan's arm. "Look, Nan!" She looked and smiled and the tears came unbidden. She turned away a moment and he didn't see. They spent the night at the same old road-house and slept on feather beds. He hadn't felt the touch of a feather bed in years. He dreamed that he was at school again, a man of thirty-five, playing marbles with a crowd of towheaded boys and they were beating him at the game while Nan was standing near, her long plait of black hair hanging down her back, laughing at him because he was barefooted! He woke with a groan, shook off the nightmare, and slept soundly until morning.