“And is all that happiness gone forever?” cried he, as he stood gazing at the scene. “I wonder,” thought he, “could Skeffy read her thoughts and tell me how she feels towards me? I wonder will he ever talk to her of me, and what will they say?” His cheek grew hot and red, and he muttered to himself, “Who knows but it may be in pity?” and with the bitterness of the thought the tears started to his eyes, and coursed down his cheeks. That same book,--how it rankled, like a barbed arrow, in his side!--that same book said that men are always wrong in their readings of woman,--that they cannot understand the finer, nicer, more subtle springs of her action; and in their coarser appreciation they constantly destroy the interest they would give worlds to create. It was as this thought flashed across his memory the car-driver exclaimed aloud, “Ah, Master Tony, did ever you see as good a pony as you? he 's carried the minister these eighteen years, and look at him how he jogs along to-day!” He pointed to a little path in the valley where old Dr. Stewart ambled along on his aged palfrey, the long mane and flowing tail of the beast marking him out though nigh half a mile away. “Why didn't I think of that before?” thought Tony. “Dolly Stewart is the very one to help me. She has not been bred and brought up like Alice, but she has plenty of keen woman's wit, and she has all a sister's love for me, besides. I 'll just go and tell her how we parted, and I 'll ask her frankly what she says to it.” Cheered by this bright idea, he pursued his way in better spirits, and soon reached the little path which wound off from the high-road through the fields to the Burnside. Not a spot there unassociated with memories, but they were the memories of early boyhood. The clump of white thorns they used to call the Forest, and where they went to hunt wild beasts; the little stream they fancied a great and rapid river, swarming with alligators; the grassy slope, where they had their house, and the tiny garden whose flowers, stuck down at daybreak, were withered before noon!--too faithful emblems of the joys they illustrated! “Surely,” thought he, “no boy had ever such a rare playfellow as Dolly; so ready to take her share in all the rough vicissitudes of a boy's pleasures, and yet to bring to them a sort of storied interest and captivation which no mere boy could ever have contributed. What a little romance the whole was,--just because she knew how to impart the charm of a story to all they did and all they planned!” It was thus thinking that he entered the cottage. So still was everything that he could hear the scratching noise of a pen as a rapid writer's hand moved over the paper. He peeped cautiously in and saw Dolly seated, writing busily at a table all strewn over with manuscript: an open book, supported by other books, lay before her, at which from time to time she glanced.