"We are at the wharf," she murmured. "I must go up to the house alone. Do not come with me. I want to think it over." "But, dearest, I shall see you to-night?" he pleaded. "Yes; but please do not persuade me now." Respecting her desire, he doffed his cap and stood aside for her to pass, bowing low before her with all the chivalry of his race, all the ardor of his youth, all the devotion of his manhood in his look and attitude. The sweetness of the present reality so far transcended her sometime imagination of it that the girl, on leaving him, walked away as if borne by seraph's wings through the air of heaven. Yet there was a note athwart her joy,--not exactly one of sadness or of heaviness, but a feeling, as it were, of maidenly awe before the bright vistas of happiness which had opened before her eyes, in her lover's presence, in his love. Unconsciously she put her hand to her face, as if the sight dazzled her. A little distance away Revere, having fastened the boat, followed her up the hill. She did not look back, but she could hear his feet upon the steps. He was there, then. He was looking at her as he had looked at her in the boat. He loved her. What had she done to merit this? She stopped on the porch by the chair where her grandfather sat gazing at the ship and dreaming as usual. She bent low and kissed him as she had never kissed him before. He awoke from his reverie with a start, half comprehending, and gazed from the girl entering the door to Revere coming up the walk. "You have been a long time, lad," he said, as the latter stopped before him. "Yes, sir. We took luncheon together at the old inn and rowed back slowly. Your granddaughter--I shall have something to say to you in a day or two, sir." "I hope so," said the admiral, quietly. "I thought so. But don't wait too many days. Days are as moments to the young; to the aged they are as years." That day Barry had not left the ship. With a long, old-fashioned glass that was chief among his treasures, which had belonged to the admiral, he had followed the boat across the harbor. He had divined--by what cunning who can say?--what had been said in the pauses under the trees. He had waited and watched for them until the lovers came back. He knew it all. Twenty times during the period of their stay upon the shore he had gone down to the locker and taken out the letters.