For two girls out on a quiet stroll, their arms about each other and their words murmurous, not any border of Suez was quite so alluring as the woods and waters seen from the parapet of this fine old stone bridge.

The main road from Blackland crossed here. As it reached the Suez side it made a strong angle under the town's leafy bluffs and their two or three clambering by-streets, and ran down the rocky margin of the stream to the new railway station and the old steamboat landing half a mile below. The bridge was entirely of rugged gray limestone, and spanned the river's channel and willow-covered sand-bars in seven high, rude arches. One Christmas dawn during the war a retreating enemy, making ready to blow up the structure, were a moment too slow, and except for the scars of a few timely shells dropped into their rear guard, it had come through those years unscathed. For, just below it, and preferable to it most of the year, was a broad gravelly ford. Beyond the bridge, on the Blackland side, the road curved out of view between woods on the right and meadows on the left. A short way up the river the waters came dimpling, green and blue in August, but yellow and swirling now, around the long, bare foot of a wooded island, that lay forever asleep in midstream, overrun and built upon by the winged Liliputians of the shores and fields.

The way down to this spot from the Halliday cottage was a grassy street overarched with low-branching evergreen oaks, and so terraced that the trees at times robbed the view of even a middle distance. It was by this way that Fannie and Barbara had come, with gathered skirts, picking dainty zigzags where, now and then, the way was wet. The spirit of spring was in the lightness of their draperies' texture and dyes—only a woman's eye would have noticed that Barbara was in mourning—and their broken talk was mainly on a plan for the celebration, on the twenty-second, not of any great and exceptionally truthful patriot's birthday—Captains Champion and Shotwell were seeing to that—but of Parson Tombs's and his wife's golden wedding.

When John March saw them, they had just been getting an astonishing amount of amusement out of the simple fact that Miss Mary Salter and the younger pastor were the committee on decorations. They were standing abreast the bridge's parapet, the evening air stirring their garments, watching the stern-wheeler, Launcelot Halliday, back out from the landing below into the fretting current for a trip down stream. John had always approved this companionship; it had tended to sustain his old illusion that Fannie's extra years need not count between her and him. But the pleasure of seeing them together now was but a flash and was gone, for something else than extra years was counting, which had never counted before. He had turned over a new leaf, as he said. On it he had subscribed with docile alacrity to every ancient grotesqueness in Parson Tombs's science of God, sin, and pardon; and then had stamped Fannie's picture there, fondly expecting to retain it by the very simple trick of garlanding it round with the irrefragable proposition that love is the fulfilling of the law! But not many days had the leaf been turned when a new and better conscience awoke to find shining there, still wet from God's own pen, the corollary that only a whole sphere of love can fulfil the law's broad circumference.

As Fannie and Barbara made their bow and moved to pass on he hurriedly raised his hat and his good horse dropped into a swift, supple walk. The bridle hand started as if to draw in, but almost at the same instant the animal sprang again into a gait which showed the spur had touched her, and was quickly out of hearing.

"Barb," murmured Fannie, "you're thinking he's improved."

"Yes, only—-"

"Only you think he'd have stopped if he'd seen us sooner. Why can't you think maybe he wouldn't? But you're not to blame; you simply have a girl's natural contempt for a boy's love. Well, a boy's love is silly; but when you see the constant kind, like John's, as sure as you live there are not many things entitled to higher respect. O Barb! I've never felt so honored by any other love that man ever offered me. He'll get over it; completely. I believe it's dying now, though it's dying hard. But the next time he loves, the girl who treats his love lightly—Let's go down in these woods and look for hepaticas. John can't bring them to me any more and Jeff-Jack never did. He sends candy. There's homage in a wild flower, Barb; but candy, oh—I don't know—it makes me ashamed."

"Why don't you tell him so?"

Fannie leaned close and whispered, "I'm afraid."

"Why, he gave me wild flowers, once."

"When? Who?" The black eyes flashed. "When did he ever give you flowers?"

"When I was five years old." They turned down a short descent into the woods.

Fannie smiled pensively. "Barb, did you notice that John——"

"Has been trading again! His love's not very constant as to horses."

"But what a pretty mare he's got! Barb, 'pon my word, when John March is well mounted, I do think, physically, he's—" The speaker hearkened. From the low place where they stood her eyes were on a level with the road. "It's him again; let's hide."

March came loping down from the bridge, slackened pace, and swept with his frowning glance the meadows on the left. Then he moved along the edge of the wood searching its sunset lights and glooms, and presently turned down into them, bending under the low boughs. And then he halted, burning with sudden resentment before the smiling, black-eyed girl who leaned against the tree, which had all at once refused to conceal her.

Neither spoke. Fannie's eyes were mocking and yet kind, and the resentment in John's turned to a purer mortification. A footstep rustled behind him and Barbara said:

"We're looking for wild flowers. Do you think we're too early?"

"No, I could have picked some this afternoon if I'd felt like it, but it's a sort o' belief with me that nobody ought to pick wild flowers for himself—ha-ha-ha!—Oh eh, Miss Garnet, I reckon I owe you an apology for charging down on you this way, but I just happened to think, after I passed you, that you could tell me where to find your father. He's president pro tem. of our land company, you know, and I want to consult him with Mr. Gamble—you know Mr. Gamble, don't you?—president of the railroad? O! of course you do! Well, he's our vice-president."

"Why, no, Mr. March, I don't know where you'll find pop-a right now. I might possibly know when I get back to the house. If it's important I could send you word."

"O no! O no! Not at all! I'll find him easily enough. I hope you'll both pardon me, Miss Fannie, but it seems as if I learned some things pow'ful slow. I ought to know by this time when two's company and three's a crowd."

Before he had finished, the two listeners had seen the remoter significance of his words, and it was to mask this that Barbara drawled—

"Why, Mr. March, that's not nice of you!"

But the young man's confusion was sufficient apology, and both girls beamed kindly on him as he presently took his leave under the delusion that his face hid his inward mortification.