THE Old Town of Oldbridge is rich of one pleasant winding highway along whose route are scattered its prettiest demesnes. Time was, once, when this sun-spattered, tree-bordered thoroughfare enjoyed its dream of peace in drowsy quietude, under spreading lindens and over-arching elms. To-day, however, it stirs in its dream.

Yet its ancient houses stand placidly enough. Comfortable and serene among park-like meadows, life in them goes on with a simple dignity and ease; and if they are the sometime innocent cause of the sin of pride to the families who inherit them, they are sources of arcadian joys to the stranger within their gates. For they are all spotless and restful—and fragrant of the breaths of several hundred years of new-mown hay, rose-arbours, and aromatic pinks, blown through the windows. These old Colonial homes speak eloquently of good life past, of still better life present—to come.

The trolley-track and the pretty road keep company a bit, together; they both turn to the left and passing in all say twenty houses, reach the Common and the Post Office, where a dozen or so more hipped roofs, set among quiet flower gardens and apple orchards lend tradition and a quaint distinction to the really lovely old Green.

The boys of Oldbridge have pre-empted this Green, the most popular of Sports Clubs, and here, after school, as their forbears did, as their fathers and grandfathers did, here they play and tumble and wrestle and fight. From here they cross the road to enter the Public School House, a red brick building which, thirty years ago, supplanted the Dames School, and which balances the old brick Meeting House at the further end.

The haunt, trysting-place, council chamber—where every mischievous plot is hatched, such is the Common. Whence the eternal Boy, lured by near-flowing waters of the Mantic joins his pals upstream for a swim, plays uproarious pranks there, ties a chap's clothes into a hard knot on the bank and when he comes dripping out in search of them chants, in raucous chorus: “Chaw raw beef—the beef is tough!”

In Winter, the frozen River Mantic makes an unrivalled skating ground; and the Oldbridge Boy still builds his ice-fortress on the Common, stocks it (ammunition of snow-balls)—and leads his regiment to victory. Here he coasts or hitches his sledge to a huge one fleetly passing, gets a glorious ride—comes home, nose and fingers frost-bitten, exceeding argumentative; talking in loud imperious voice; in truth a very dog of wintry joys.

Too often, after supper, the Boy of Oldbridge takes delectable but stolen interest in the conversation of the village Post Master and his cronies. By the door in Summer—round the stove in Winter, he and they discuss the politics of the hour to many hoary anecdotes between. Pastime sternly prohibited by parents requiring infinite discretion! Thus one steals with muffled tread down by back stairs, one issues forth by back windows, one whistles to one's fides achates—and off.

Miss Adgate, who to her regret had never been a small boy, never would be, was none the less of opinion that boys are the most amusing imps and she soon exercised her opportunity for making the acquaintance of a New England lad, Master Jack Enderfield, the twelve-year-old son of Mrs. Enderfield, who lived in the Enderfield House on the Common. Mr. Enderfield, after preaching to his world for fifteen years, had left it, with, he feared on his death-bed, little advantage to its soul. He had gone leaving a library full of theological tracts and treatises, of philosophic books and pamphlets, a comfortable fortune inherited from collateral great-aunts,—and a son, Jack. Jack was blond, blue-eyed, curly haired, of an enquiring expansive nature towards those in whom he felt confidence, and a diverting person. Having met Miss Adgate at his mother's, when she returned the lady's call he considered himself entitled to drop in when he liked at Barracks Hill.

“She's got such stunning hair, mother, and such white hands.... And when she talks it makes a fellow feel good. She uses such pretty words and her voice is low and round. And she listens to a man and draws him out.”

“But, my dear, it may not be convenient for Miss Adgate to receive you so often,” said Mrs. Enderfield. “Miss Adgate has other people to see, other things to do.”

“Oh, she has always time to see me,” replied Jack, with a wave of the hand. “She told Martha to say she was out the other day when the Wetherbys called. She took me up to her sitting room and showed me a lot of jolly European things and gave me this paper knife.” Jack drew from an inside pocket, offering it for inspection, a Venetian filagree paper knife wrapped in soiled and crumpled tissue paper.

The maternal heart could not withstand such obvious proof of favouritism towards her idol. Though warned not to wear his welcome out, Jackie descended frequently upon Barracks Hill, but this, though it concerns, runs ahead, of the story.

II

Miss Adgate received calls for a month; paid them—was dined—was less wined than vastly cocktailed,—in simple or elaborate New England fashion. She returned these hospitalities and she discovered that Oldbridge New and Oldbridge Old held agreeable people. If they treated her a little as an Egeria she accepted the rÔle without fuss and gave to modesty its due.

Some of these new acquaintances, of a pretty taste in letters, on far more than nodding terms with art, had, after years spent abroad—fallen like herself alack, upon a day! Alack the day on which we come to the disputably sage conclusion that East,—West.... We know, we learn—too late, sometimes alas, the fatal rest! And they had cast behind them the dust of the East, and they had turned Westward with a very lively sense of the superior enchantments of Europe. But once at home a devout appreciation of the sweet repose ('tis the just phrase), an imperceptible abandonment to that soothing peace which hovers insidious over a New England homestead, ah, ye rewards of Virtue! these had quietly engulfed in sodden well-being, the finer European impressions.

Miss Adgate a little later, perceived that these wise people—settled ere long unblushingly to New Englandism, never again intended to budge. They had accepted, deliberately, the prose of life. And Miss Adgate, enamoured of New England, still kept her head enough to wonder, with some dismay, whether she, too, if she stayed here, she, too, would end by looking upon Oldbridge New and Oldbridge Old as the be-all and end-all of existence! So many things spoke here to her heart. Her tender spirit basked here, all day, in good will. But wasn't Oldbridge just a trifle lacking in effervescence? And yes—didn't Oldbridge take itself a bit solemnly? Ah, yes! And—yes—it had a distressing tendency to be very serious about everything. To none of these states of mind had Ruth been initiated, and every good Catholic knows that mirth is from God, dullness from the Devil.

Miss Adgate, who had hitherto lived on the plane of an impersonal, if somewhat facetious consideration of public matters,—of wit, persiflage; Miss Adgate found when it came to small gossip that she was an irritated listener. Carping criticism made her yawn, she became dumb, had nothing to say. It is indeed a stupid trade! Moreover her soul had ever disported in innocent folly, in gaiety and witty conversation. She soon attracted those who cared for the same light stuff and Barracks Hill became, ere long, the centre of a coterie of frolic, music, and laughter, where personalities except in the ways of honest chaff were tabooed—and no one's affairs, wonder of wonders! were commented upon behind his back.

III

But, after all, Barracks Hill it was, “poetic, historic Barracks Hill,” which spoke to her fancy,—held her heart!

This house and the hill of this house were suggestive; packed full of romance. Ruth, whose temper was a charming compound of mirth love and poesy,—Ruth who had the soul of a poet in the body of a fair woman,—Ruth now fell deep in love with reverie.—She spent long days in a singular sort of trance. Lingering in a room she pondered its messages—wandering upon the hill, she dreamed and mused. The room mysteriously unburdened itself of long pent emotions,—joys and woes; the hill unfolded its soul, opened wide its heart to her; and lonely desolate ghosts—the ghosts of monotonous, innocent, happy, sorry lives confided in her—told her their tales of pain; disclosed to her their rapture of hope, their mysteries of birth and love and aspiration—their tragedy of denial—and of death.

Ruth hearkened to invisible messengers. As she came and went in the still house, they floated towards her light as down,—intangible, so perceptible,—in the quiet house, and through the corridors. But Love's very breath greeted her on the hill.... Love met her there, with exuberance by day; Love wept there, in her heart—bitter tears—by night. Yes, a secret sadness brooded at the core of those ghostly souls. But a musical refrain, a simple entreaty seemed ever in the air and its contrapuntal burden: “Love, love and laughter! Give us love and laughter!” they implored—conquered her heart.

“They hope in me!” Ruth thought, wondering and wide-eyed.... “They have confidence in me! The old place believes in me; it trusts me, it knows that I love it; it knows I reverence them.... It knows, they know, how my spirit would wish to cull those unfulfilled desires, every one they long to lighten themselves of, and bring each one to its fruition if I can. Yes, each of you dear ghosts, you who have been lonely so long and friendless—you know I'll execute your bidding if I can.”

And, every day, at the little Catholic Parish Church, Ruth said a Rosary for the house and for the souls that had passed through it. And she visited the house, from attic to cellar. She was convinced that on one occasion she saw a veritable ghost who, smiling at her, passed across the attic. She discovered there, at all events, some fine old pieces of furniture, white with dust; and she caused these to be cleansed and polished and placed in the rooms.

IV

One fine December morning Ruth walked with Miranda on the hill. She was beginning to have projects.

“Miranda!” said she,—“Heaven knows where you picked the name up,” mused Ruth. “Dear kitten, I believe I'll invite my European friends here! The fashion is in Europe to come and have a look at America. I'll keep open house, and you and I and General Adgate shall receive the most famous people in Europe at Barracks Hill. And we'll show them what they ought to be curious about, what they've seen only in books,—we'll show them a beautiful old New England town enriched from all sources yet keeping its distinct New England flavour. And I'll give to Oldbridge the enlivening experience,” she said with a gleam, “of hobbing and of nobbing with every light-minded modern who doesn't take life's trivialities solemnly; with every human of talent who cultivates the sweet tonic spirit of levity.”

Miranda listened, his chrysoprase eyes widened—contracted—blazed with intelligent sympathy.

“I'm with you, if it's anything that has to do with fun,” he loudly purred.

Miranda was not a kitten—Miranda was a sleek, a superb tortoise-shell cat. A cat of the masculine persuasion who could have counted six or seven summers if a day. General Adgate had, in “a tonic spirit of levity,” christened him at his birth Miranda—it may be because the Master of Barracks Hill had likened himself that day to Prospero. Be this as may be, Miranda had kept his youth; his idea of beer and skittles was still to play at any game he could find a playmate for; he, at least, was all for sociability.

And it was his friendly habit to follow Ruth, running along the wall of the terrace at her left as she paced the hill. Now, when she addressed him, he drew himself lazily, along the warm stones, stretched himself infinitely, clawed the rough stones deluged in December sunshine, and assuming an irresistible attitude as she spoke, pricked his ears. Then, with a bound made across the turf to an apple-tree, mad for a frolic. He ran up its grey side, lichen-covered, paused, looked down, and jeered at her over his shoulder.

“Why don't you follow me?” he taunted. Took, the next moment, his leap over her head, landed at her feet, was scuttling deliriously through wheel ruts, grass-grown, passage of last year's cartwheels. Burrowing under accumulations of brown crackling leaves, flattening himself lengthwise, poking out a pink nose at her, he showed a pair of questioning, mischievous eyes.

“Send out your invitations,” counselled he, “but first, catch me!”

Ruth plunged to a great rustle of dry leaves, and light and irresponsible as they Miranda darted to a sheltering juniper. Ruth tried to seize him—useless vanity, for he was quicksilver. Up another tree ere she could lay hands on him, he, perhaps not disdainful of a little petting, and at all events Bon Prince, finally relented; he allowed her at last to have her way, come close and take him in her arms.

“You're a duck,” said Ruth, laughing, scratching his ears, laying her cheek against his fur all glossy and fragrant of wood odours. “Such a mercurial duck! You make me feel thrice welcome here. I believe you are the spirit of the place. Yes—the little friendly spirit of the house who attracts and keeps those who love it for its good—who uses every wile, too, and coquetry to do so.”

Miranda at her words slipped struggling through Ruth's arms to earth, arched his back, rubbed himself against her skirts, purred loud and long—circling round her, tail in air and as who should say: “Yes, yes, no doubt. But let us waste no time in sentiment,” and away he bounded to a remoter corner of the hill.

“Of course! he's showing me the place,” she cried. In genuine enjoyment of the sport she ran, eyes brimming with laughter, after the clever fellow as he trotted on; he beguiled her here and he beguiled her there; he discovered nooks to her full of interest and variety. And as she abandoned herself to the game, played and romped with him, it occurred to her once again that this, all this—was not all this verily part of a sort of terrestrial Paradise?

Here,—the chimneys of the house just visible below, here, aloof in a beautiful world,—she stood on the brow of her hill among gnarled fine old apple trees. She went up to one, she laid her cheek against it.

“Yes, I can understand what a sight you were in the Garden of Eden,” she whispered. “In Spring, when your rosy blossoms are out,—in Autumn when you are hung with ripe red and golden fruit! And, yes—Henry Pontycroft's prophecy is fulfilled.... Here is Eve, sulking in her native apple orchard!”

“DerriÈr' chez mon pÈre,

Vole, vole mon cour, vole—

DerriÈr' chez mon pÈre

Y a un pommier doux—

Tout doux et you!”

“If Adam, or if Pontycroft were here...” she sighed, “I should be vastly tempted—-tout doux et you-,—to tempt either of them. Oh, see how the rosy horizon is caught in its net woven of grey leafless branches! The sky is a sumptuous Prussian blue and how it fades at the zenith to palest azure! All the Royal colour is broken up by bold white clouds, and—this—ah, this is far too fair a sight for one pair of eyes to revel in alone. This cries, aloud, for Adam!”

Ruth looked about her. At her feet, oddly enough, curiously enough, a red firm apple, forgotten there,—untouched by frosts,—at her feet lay a fine red pippin. She picked it up, she smiled, she wondered....

“But—but—there's only you—old Puss! Here, catch it,” she cried to Miranda, who came running towards her, scenting the game he loved. With a gentle toss Ruth threw the apple along the turf and left Miranda to the ecstatic enjoyment of patting it, pushing it and rolling over it for quite eleven minutes.

V

Miss Adgate had Miranda's approbation for inoculating Oldbridge with levity. She consulted General Adgate:

“Anything you like, Ruth. Anything you like to keep you here contented.” And he was not in the least fired by her schemes and had nothing further to say. But Miss Adgate sat down at this and scribbled fifty notes, selecting her first guests from all the worlds held in the one London World—the men, the women she liked, whose work she liked; the people who could be irrelevant at a pinch, amused, amusing. She invited them to visit her at Barracks Hill during the coming Summer, and in time she received effusive acceptances to her invitations.

VI

“The Oldbridge Industrial Exhibits opens to-morrow night,” General Adgate, tentatively, said one day. “Do you care to go? You'll find all your friends. The Light Infantry Band will play to us. It's rather jolly.”

If New England days in old New England houses are fruitful (to young women of “high faculties quiescent”), if they are fecund in long, poetic dreams,—if life in Oldbridge does offer limitless advantage for the building of castles in the air—none can deny that it has, too, its own artless way of playing up to the leading lady.

“I wouldn't be left out for all the planets,” protested Ruth. “I'm curious to know what the Oldbridge Industries are.”

“In that case——” answered her uncle.

He went off smiling, she could not conceive why.

“Miss Adgate was a sight for the gods,” vowed Rutherford. “Brown velvet, sables, to suit her brown hair with a red glint in it, and eyes!”

Miss Adgate doubtless was a sight for the gods, when (conducted by her uncle) she went the following evening to the Oldbridge Industrial Exhibits. As she was led first by young Rutherford, then by young Milman, then by young Massington, then by young Leffingwell, and then by young Wetherby—through a crowd of friends, to every stall and counter of the big illuminated hall,—as each of these young men explained, volubly, minutely, each exhibit—little was left, we may believe, of Oldbridge Industry which Ruth had not at the end fathomed, become well acquainted with. Pausing at one stall and at another, she ordered with reckless discrimination, rugs, lawnmowers, carpenter's tools, muslins, silks, furniture; and a surfeit of glass blown by a little glass-blower who had quite a local reputation for his designs; linens, too, and rugs of delicate colour dyed and woven in the neighbourhood upon a hand-loom a hundred years of age. The tools might do for Jobias. He had confided to Paolina that his stock was getting rusty; the mowers, asked the piratical salesman, are not lawnmowers forever getting out of order?

These, Ruth's purchases, she destined for the new wing. She was furnishing the old Morris House, too. The Morris House General Adgate had, to her joy, just presented her with. This had been the home of a maternal greatgrandmother. From its portals, that lady with the patient eyes (whose portrait, painted by one Jarvis, hung in the drawing-room) having taken Admiral Richard Adgate for better or for worse under the Puritan marriage service read by Parson Ebenezer Allsworthy,—that lady had tripped across the hill to come and reign at Barracks Hill.

The Morris House! Miss Adgate destined it for her Summer overflow of guests. It is is a quaint and picturesque spot, all nooks and cupboards, within; of panelled walls and broad brick fireplaces. As its gardens overlook the purling brook and the Wigwam, it was, thought she, well suited to the purpose she intended—and it is in fact deserving of far more attention that this passing word can say for it.

VII

On New Year's Day, Miss Adgate woke to a blizzard.

The New Year in Oldbridge is feasted in that old-time pleasant fashion which has long ago passÉ de mode in New York, which is regarded with disfavour at Boston and in other New England towns. But Oldbridge perseveres in welcoming the New Year, for this smacks of ancientry, and, in sooth, the custom is a genial one. 'Tis well known that in Paris, every hostess, mistress of a salon, is deluged with cards and flowers and bonbons from Boissier on the New Year. At Rome, too, on the New Year, and in Vienna and Berlin, is it not considered courteous for a young man, not alone to leave his card, but to call wherever he has received a welcome? The servants of the houses he frequents, a hint to the wise, never allow him to forget his obligations; they pass at his lodgings betimes on the New Year and receive for their Buon' Anno a substantial Buono Mano. Oldbridge is, therefore, wholly in touch with the most modern capitals when it hospitably celebrates the New Year.

As Ruth, accompanied by Paolina, passed, by meadows all sparkling and white with hoar-frost, from the New Year's Midnight Mass at the Parish Church, the stars in a clear sky scintillated with suspicious brilliancy. The usual eager nipping air of a New England Autumn had until then condensed into just an occasional flurry of snow—or it had subdued its edge; the days were often warm enough to sit beside open windows. The American Winter had not begun to show its teeth. But from her bed to-day Ruth saw the flakes descend—small, dry,—to the rumour of low complaints, murmurs in the chimney. The flakes had a stealthy, a persistent look. Ruth, though, was very, sure the storm would prove the hitherto pretty diversion of a whitened landscape and trees, of a rapid thaw under warm sun, and Miss Adgate adored these snow falls! She had never, she thought, seen anything comparable to the white still beauty of the country and the wood, the gentian blueness of the sky when the snow had ceased, the clouds had emptied sack and the sun burst forth. When this happened she would put on a pair of high rubber boots, take a stick and start for a walk. And when, in her walk, she came across the marks of little feet along the snow,—squirrel tracks, mole tracks, the tracks of birds, quail, the larger ones of woodchucks, of foxes,—little existences living to themselves—which she could never know, never fathom—her mind would travel off into endless reveries and speculations.

But her rÔle to-day was that of hostess and there would be no going out to-day after the snowfall. Miss Adgate shortly after breakfast sauntered into the kitchen to see how matters there were progressing.

Before her, on the kitchen table, an array of angel cake, nut cake, pound cake, orange cake, maple-sugar cake lacked the supreme touch, and waited to be frosted. Spread upon a crackled Coalport dish a quantity of thin, brown, crisp, sugar wafers invited appetite. These wafers were from a recipe handed down in the Adgate family. Ruth knew the original, had seen it in Priscilla Mulline Alden's neat cramped little Huguenot handwriting; it was carefully preserved among the most curious of the Adgate relics.

Martha, Ellen,—busy preparing endless edible New England subtleties in the buttery,—Margaret stirring an icing for the cake, General Adgate expected,—he had promised to come in an hour to brew his famous punch, the ingredients for which were mellowing and combining in the dining-room. Everything was, then, well under way, each aide-de-camp was at his post; the commander-in-chief felt she might safely mount to her dressing-room to let Paolina put on the robes of state.

Now it must be known that Paolina had taken to her new life with unexpected cheerfulness; and the reason was shortly to be disclosed.

“Signorina,” Paolina began timidly, while she dressed her mistress's hair in a high French twist, placed a bow of pale blue ribbon fetchingly to the left of the coil, poised it there like a butterfly with wings outspread,—“Signorina—would—you be very angry if I confided to you, something?”

“It depends upon what the something is, Paolina,” said Ruth absently, giving her attention to the becoming effect of the bow.

“Oh, Signorina!” sighed Paolina. Suddenly she clasped her hands; she held them out before her, dropped to her knees. “Oh! Signorina! Jobias has asked me to marry him!”

“Jobias—has—asked you—to—marry him?” repeated Ruth in astonishment. Then she began to laugh—laughed in merry peals of musical laughter, her head thrown back, her face a ripple of mirth.

But Paolina was quite offended.

“Signorina,” she said, and she rose with dignity, “why should it make you laugh to learn that Tobias has asked me to marry him?”

“Forgive me, Paolina,” Ruth said; “it is not that Jobias has asked you to marry him that makes me laugh—it is the tone in which you break the news to me.” Then, gravely: “And what did you say to him, Paolina, when he asked you to marry him?”

“Signorina, I said I would have to ask you. I said that you were a mother to me, and that I would have to get your consent.”

“So,—” said Ruth, “you really think of accepting him?”

“I esteem him,” said Paolina, “I think he is a good man. He has saved up two thousand dollars. He has a nice house across the river which he lets out, and of which he reserves for himself one room. I think my own mother would be pleased with the match, if you approve, Signorina.”

“But do you realise,” said Ruth, “that if you marry Jobias you cannot see your mother again? It costs a deal of money to cross the ocean. Jobias could not take you—he would have his work to do.”

“Oh, Signorina, but you would take us! I would not leave you, Jobias said I need not. But when you marry (Jobias says you will surely marry, before long)”—Paolina nodded her head several times sagaciously—“then your husband will want a valet, and Jobias says he will be glad to put himself at your excellencies' services. And then, you will go abroad for the wedding tour, and you will want to take us. I can then go to my mother and receive her blessing.”

Ruth caught her breath. “Thus are our lives arranged for us,” she thought, smiling, “and by whom?” For half an instant she was silent. Somewhere, among the recesses of memory, Ruth tried to recall such a conversation. She remembered—she had read it,—why,—it was in one of Corvo's witty tales.... So does history repeat itself. What the romancer invents women and men enact.

But just then, crisis of Paolina's life, the knocker at the front door went rat-tat.

“Good gracious, and I'm not dressed yet. Put my dress on quickly, Paolina,—we'll finish our talk at some other time,” Ruth exclaimed.

Paolina ran to the bed, lifted the pale blue chiffon gown inlaid with yellow lace—passed it dexterously, delicately, over Ruth's head, and began with her adroit, rapid fingers to lace the bodice. Martha knocked at the door: “Master Jack Enderfield is in the drawing-room, Miss,” she said in her precise voice. Ruth glanced at the clock—the hands pointed to ten.

“Tell Master Jack Enderfield I'll be down directly,” she said. Ruth, standing before the cheval glass, gave a light pat here to her gown, a touch there to her coiffure—Martha lingered a minute to take the vision in.

“Yes, Miss,” she said, closed the door, and was gone.

Then Ruth descended the stairs in a froufrou of skirts, wafting an odour of violets as she went along; and she greeted Master Jack Enderfield at the drawing-room door with that radiant grace the young man seemed so well able to appreciate.

VIII

“I thought I'd come early,” Jack explained, as he stood before the wood-fire in a man-of-the-world attitude: “I knew that when the crowd began there'd be no chance for me.”

“I'm delighted you came early,” said Ruth. “Won't you sit down?”

Jack sat down. He plunged at once into the subject which was on his mind.

“It's all nonsense, this talk about a Republic,” he began. “We'd have been much better off if we'd stuck to England. Oh, we mightn't have been so rich,” he made a large gesture, “but we'd have been nicer.”

“Jack, these sentiments on the New Year for a child of Liberty, a son of the Revolution!” Ruth reproved.

“It's not my fault, Miss Adgate, if I'm a son of the Revolution, and I don't believe in Liberty. I wish my double great-grandfather hadn't come over here and married my double great-grandmother.” Master Jack stuck his hands doggedly in his pockets and glowered at the fire.

“Oh, cheer up,” laughed his young hostess. “Accept the inevitable, Jack, make the best of it! But what can have happened to-day to make you think ill of Liberty and the Revolution?”

“It's very well for you to sit there, Miss Adgate, sit and poke fun at me in your soft voice and your beautiful gown,” Jack said, flushing. “But you know as I do, that this—this country—is rotten—it's going to the dogs, nothing'll save it!”

“My dear Jack,” accused Ruth, “you've been reading the newspapers!” Miss Adgate never would, for her part, so much as look at an American newspaper; she got all her news by way of England, in the Morning Post.

“The demoralisation's in the air, Miss Adgate, the newspapers only tell what's happening. But our nation has the impertinence to go on, like a rooster on a wall, flapping its wings in the world's face and screeching, 'Admire me! Don't I behave pretty?' No,” continued Jack impressively, with a look of uncanny wisdom in his blue eyes, “No—I'm going to skip this country as soon as I can get out of it. Here in quiet old Oldbridge, we're not so bad, though we do like to play a game among ourselves; proud of being old and aristocratic and so forth, and we expect if we're good we'll get to Heaven; some of us, though, don't remember Charity's the only way to get to Heaven! But the whole country's talking Choctaw,—with a hare lip—and only a few of us, like your uncle and old Mrs. Leffingwell and Mr. Massington, know what a good Anglo-Saxon Ancestry implies. The rest of us cackle like the aforesaid barnyard fowl.

“Miss Adgate,” went on Jack, briskly, “no wonder! See how we mix affably with the riff-raff who haven't a language. People who are told by the blooming Constitution of this land that they're as good as you and me and make uncouth noises according. This I'm-as-good-as-you idea is all rot. They're not as good as you and they're not as good as me. I am better than the Butcher's boy, who hasn't brains enough to know his own foolish business and forgets to bring my meat. I am better than Ezekiel, who won't black my boots. Damn him,” said the boy wildly, “why shouldn't he black my boots? Let him do his honest work, like a man; become a useful member of society if he wants to get to be my equal! Not spend his days shirking and complaining through his nose.”

“Dear, dear Jackie!—Have a glass of lemonade, have a cake! America's not so bad if you can rise above it,” soothed Miss Adgate with, perhaps, a grain of malice. She rang for refreshments.

“She's the sweetest, prettiest, dearest thing in Oldbridge,” the boy thought as he followed Ruth's movements with adoring eyes.

“Miss Adgate, am I accountable for what my double great-grandfather did?” Jack asked suddenly. “I think he played me a low trick. He was one of these Cavalier people who stuck to Charles the Second. The King, after he'd come to the throne, offered him the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. But the idiot refused it! He'd tasted blood, he said. He knew Court life, found it dull!—He wanted one of adventure, something like the dance he'd been leading with Charles. 'Give me land, Sire, in Virginia,' he said. 'I'll go out there and extend your Majesty's importance.'

“Miss Adgate, he should have stuck to Merry England. And pray, what did his great-grandson do? Married a Northerner, became wife-ridden, dropped his title, sold his lands, went to New England, settled right here in Oldbridge, his wife's town; and equipped a regiment and fought. I'm glad to say he got killed, at Lexington. But not without leaving posterity, of which you see before you the last indignant remnant.”

“And you, you find you're reverted to the state of mind of the Cavalier before he forsook England,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “Jack, you've a homesick hankering to go back there?”

“Yes, Miss Adgate,” cried the boy. “And, I'll tell you a still greater secret——”

Jack paused.

“C'est une journÉe de confidences,” thought Ruth, “well?” she encouraged.

“Miss Adgate, we're not aristocratic,” Jack declared in a low voice. “We've just become low-down Provincials. But when I'm a man I mean to go and claim our lands and titles and our position in Devon. I'm the rightful heir! My father kept the Enderfield Tree in an old desk in the drawing-room. It's there, at this moment, in a tin tube, on parchment. I've often brought it out when my mother's at church and had a good look at it.”

“Try a chocolate,” interposed Ruth soothingly; but the image of the Enderfield tree in a tube made her laugh as she offered the lacquered box, inlaid with mother of pearl, which she kept filled for these occasions.

“You're a Catholic, Miss Adgate,” presently observed the youthful aristocrat when he had permitted Ruth's sweets to be thrust upon him.

“Yes,” said Ruth urbanely. And—“I wonder whether Jack is preparing to rend the Faith,” she thought.

“Well,” Jack announced with deliberation,

“I mean to be a Catholic when I'm done with all this.” He swept the present away with his hand.

“Ah?” said Ruth, surprised. “Why?”

“Oh, it's the only Faith for a Gentleman,” the boy answered. “For a gentleman and a scholar,” he emendated. “You see we're all compounded too much of human nature and we're all too much given to thinking. Yet our thinking leads nowhere,—in the end the flesh and the devil do what they like with us. We may sit with our heads between our hands, we may try to reconcile our human nature with idealism until we're ready for the madhouse, and we'll get to the madhouse, but we won't have solved the problem. Now a man wants to be decent, and the Catholic Faith (I got Mary to tell me a lot about it, and I've read about it in some of my father's books), while it makes allowances for human nature and treats it in the most sympathetic way, does know how to keep it within bounds. Why, it's a regular school of Saints! And it honestly recognises that we're mortal; inheritors of original sin as the spark flies upward. Yet if we go and confess our sins and try to feel sorry for 'em, we receive the grace of the Sacrament of Penance and Absolution,—and we can then receive the Blessed Sacrament. And when we receive the Blessed Sacrament our souls are developed and fed from God Himself and enabled to dominate our bodies.”

“I see you've been well instructed,” said Ruth, astonished at this boy's clear exposition.

“I got Mary to tell me a lot about the Catholic Faith, and I've read Bellarmine and Saint Augustine and a lot of my father's books,” repeated the boy, a little wearily. “But what I like best,” he said brightening again, “is that the Church is down on divorce.”

“What hasn't this singular boy reflected upon,” thought Ruth.

“In a few years I'm going to take the money my father left me, marry, and go abroad and be a writer, Miss Adgate,” declared Jack.

“Ah,—that might not be a bad idea. Have you selected the young lady?” Ruth enquired.

“I've been looking about, among the girls here,” Jack answered, “but I don't find any I can fall in love with,” he added plaintively. “They're all rather silly and superficial. I should like to find someone like you,” he declared with abrupt enthusiasm. “Someone who's pretty, someone who's a soft sweet voice, thinks about things,—likes to read, that sort of thing. Yes,” he said, gazing at her, “if you were younger or I older, I should like you to marry me, I should ask you to marry me.”

“But no divorce,” Ruth threatened merrily.

“No divorce? No—of course not!” said Jack in sober disgust. “When once we're married it's for better for worse. I shall say that from the first. Don't we always have to live with people we quarrel with at first? Look at my mother and Mary. She was for flouncing that girl from the house the first week, and Mary gave notice, day after she got in. Then they shook down and my mother thinks Mary's a treasure and Mary'd cut her hand off for my mother. She would for me, told me so. Gives me all the cream and pie I want, never tells when I come in late from the Post Office. No, the sooner you find out you're tied to the person you love by a hard knot for life,—the sooner you realise that marriage is a Sacrament, the sooner—if you've got an ounce of sense and the Catholic Faith to help you—you learn to shake down and be happy. Besides, my wife shall be in love with me and she'll do exactly as I like,” declared Master Jack Enderfield.

IX

A gay jingle-jangle, the concord of sleigh-bells, the muffled piaffering of horses' hoofs and the door-knocker went again rat-tat.... Voices sounded in the hall, Rutherford and Robert Leffingwell entered the room, Jack's tÊte-À-tÊte was interrupted.

“Good-bye, Miss Adgate,” said Jack, abruptly. He cast a scowl of dislike at the jovial face of Rutherford. Before Ruth could make reply Jack was out the front door, and his friend had a glimpse of a pair of boyish legs leaping the offset.

“Splendid way of getting rid of obstacles,” Rutherford said as he followed Miss Adgate's eyes, “but what an odd boy it is! We're in for a blizzard, Miss Adgate,” added he, and he approached the fire and cheerfully rubbed his hands.

“A Blizzard!” cried Ruth. She ran to the window, followed by her two guests.

For a moment Ruth and the two young men watched the flakes descend.... They seemed to fall, fall, from limitless Niagaras of snow, from regions without the world, whose fountain-heads, beyond the skies, might be situate in those wastes of storm and cloud, where a Teutonic Mythology places its gods. The trees swayed gently, but even as Ruth watched them they had begun to bend in torture under a furious gale. Clouds of snow rose and fell like the billows of the sea....

The temperature capriciously dropped to far below zero. Had not Jobias been prepared for this by previous knowledge, the house might have become uninhabitable. But Jobias knew his business and stood by the furnace. All that day and evening he watched it, fed it;—and left his post from time to time only to replenish with fresh baskets of logs the voracious fireplaces in the drawing-rooms, casting above the baskets of wood a paternal smile, an indulgent glance upon those idle ones gathered round the flames.

Sledges, meantime, drove up. Guests departed, guests arrived, unruffled by stress of weather. All, rather, were most obviously exhilarated by it. Ruth's friends were in the maddest spirits. Punch flowed, quips, cranks, peals of laughter made the house resound. The Blizzard adding, at it always does, a fresh elixir, more oxygen to the already supercharged New England atmosphere, Ruth, too, felt unaccountably elated. Her eyes sparkled while the winds howled and hooted, and bullied and tore; the unassuaged tempers of five thousand demons seemed about to take their fill of hate upon an innocent, well-meaning world, but a rosy colour bloomed in Miss Adgate's usually pale cheeks. She had never appeared to such advantage; she had never looked so lovely, appeared so brilliant, nor been so amusing. Rutherford, as though the storm had gone to his head, Rutherford watching her covertly, vowed he could throw himself at her feet before the roomful, and Ruth's intuitions warned her; she had a feminine inkling of danger. She chatted and she laughed from her corner by the table laden with excellent things to eat; but she kept Rutherford at arm's length the while her fancy began to draw a picture of Pontycroft, standing it beside Rutherford. For the first time, she perceived that General Adgate recalled Pontycroft in a measure. Tall, thin, spare, his aquiline features were like Pontycroft's, his bearing was that of a distinguished man. “He has Harry Pontycroft's air of knowing that he knows,” reflected Ruth softly; tenderly to her soul she quoted a line Pontycroft long ago had ironically applied to himself:

“He who Knows that he Knows, follow him.”

Pontycroft loved to discourse for the pleasure of holding forth. General Aldgate was reticent. His voice was low, well modulated; one could not have helped listening to it, or to what he said; even though this had not been wise or witty if often touched with irony.

Rutherford, of medium stature, had the neck of a bull. His skin, originally clear, was yet ensanguined by exposure to wind and weather; he liked an out-of-door life and since he was heir to a fortune and detested the counting house, his life went in hunting, shooting, and fishing. He had a shock of black hair, clear black eyes, rather an attractive habit of darting a keen glance at his interlocutor as he spoke—a glance that seemed to grasp all there was to see, hidden or upon the surface, in a flash. But his voice was nasal, his words rushed, spluttered to be free; they issued chopped in two and left the idea unformulated. It required some familiarity with the American vernacular to understand him.

“And he, a college man!” scoffed Miss Adgate.

But at that instant—while Ruth indulged, I grieve to acknowledge it, the spirit of mockery—a thunderous crash broke the unison of lively voices. The score of people in the rooms flew to the windows. There, tossed to earth, abased from glory, prone upon the ground—imploring boughs lifted to heaven, a wreck—there lay the monster Adgate elm, one of the hoary elms in the carriage sweep. It lay there as neatly cut as with a scimitar. The splendid tree was literally slashed in twain by the Blizzard's invisible weapon, the prostrate thing loomed, portentous, to twenty pairs of eyes.

With the rest, Ruth stared at the fallen King. There was a lump in her throat.... No one spoke.... Every man and woman in the room had waxed intimate with that old tree, had come to man's or woman's estate beside it; they had played under it, insensibly had come to love it, as a part of themselves, as a piece of their pleasant, happy lives. This comrade and landmark was, too, one of the pardonable vanities of Oldbridge.

“Praise Heaven it wasn't the roof,” said, at length, the Master of Barracks Hill. He knew, though, he would have preferred to have it the roof. A roof may be replaced. His niece even, did not suspect the passion of attachment any plant or tree upon his land could stir in him upon occasion.

X

Perseveringly the snowflakes descended. They continued to fall, fall, fall, for another thirty-six hours. The wind next morning, though, had stopped, and debris of yesterday's storm had been removed. A trackless white garment of snow spread to the furthest reaches of Barracks Hill.

“This is all very weird,” said Ruth to Miranda, as, side by side, they sat and gazed on leagues and leagues of the white silence. “Miranda, this is all very well—Blizzards are very stirring; simple homely pleasures are very pleasing, this landscape is very beautiful, but,——-” Ruth suppressed a yawn.

“Besides, why will young men make geese of themselves? One can't get away from him, Miranda; a Blizzard even, does not keep him away! Miranda! If there's an object, my dear kitten, I detest, it's a sentimental young man.”

“Uncle,” said Ruth, nonchalantly, to General Adgate that evening after supper, as, with Miranda purring snugly beside her, the three sat together in the drawing-room, “I have an invitation from the Bolingbrokes, in Washington. They want me to come to them for a visit. Would you—would you miss me very much?” she coaxed, and she went to him and laid a caressing hand on the old man's cheek—“would you mind, very much, if I were to accept?”

“Mind, my dear?” General Adgate looked at her. “Who am I to say mind? You are your own mistress. Miss you? That's another pair of sleeves.”

“But suppose I bring them back with me,—I mean the Bolingbrokes,” laughed she. “They're such dears.... You'd fall in love with her, the sauciest sprite in Christendom. And he'll welcome the occasion to talk international Politics with you! I believe,” Ruth teased,—she drew up the Empire settle before the fire, she took Miranda to her knees and sat down again; “I believe that it's my Duty—to go—to go fetch them—to play with you.” With a final nod of decision Miss Adgate placed two small, elaborately shod feet, in a pair of high-heeled, steel-embroidered Florentine shoes, upon the fender; she began, with equal decision, to remove the wrappers from The Athenoum, The Saturday Review and a couple of Morning Posts.

“Go—my dear,” said the old man gently.

“Dear me! I feel like a brute,” thought Miss Adgate. “What will he do if I return to England? Oh, why will people get fond of people!”

Miranda purred.... The fire responded; a crisp, little musical crepitation; the flames licked the wood, the logs consumed themselves, in a cadenced song of happy Death and blessed Eternity. Punctured by this music silence entered, cozily, warmly descended upon the New England drawing-room.

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