One golden evening in September, Mr. Meredith came in from his weekly trip to town considerably excited.

"There's news, Lina," he said to his niece, who was laying the cloth on the table, and deftly arranging the tea-things.

Jaquelina looked at him with a start and a blush. She fancied he had brought her a letter from her lover.

"Well, Uncle Charlie?" she said, expectantly.

"Yes," said Farmer Meredith, "there's wonderful news for you. The horse-thief, Gerald Huntington, attempted to escape night before last. He knocked down two keepers, and got almost a mile away before he was caught and taken back. They say he fought like a lion for his freedom."

Jaquelina started and grew deadly pale at his words.

"I have brought the newspaper with me," went on the farmer. "It's all written there. Stop clattering the dishes a minute, Lina, and I'll read it out for you."

His niece stood still with her hand resting on the table, and listened while he turned the paper and read out, slowly:

"Attempted escape of Gerald Huntington, the chief of the outlaw gang that had infested the mountains so long, and who was so summarily captured little more than a year ago by a brave young girl."

Having read this much, which was printed in flaring head lines and capitals, Mr. Meredith cleared his throat, and proceeded to attack the smaller type:

"It is well known to the most of our readers that the long-pending case against Gerald Huntington was decided in the court on Monday by a sentence of ten years' confinement in the penitentiary. The prisoner was remanded to the county jail to remain until Friday, when he was to be removed to the penitentiary. Tuesday evening, at dusk, he was visited in his cell by a veiled lady who remained with him half an hour engaged in deep and private conversation. It is supposed that this mysterious stranger conveyed to him a club which was skillfully concealed beneath her voluminous draperies. At nightfall the prisoner, armed with this enormous and heavy implement, assaulted the keeper who brought him his supper, and succeeded in escaping into the hall, where he knocked down the door-keeper and made a desperate run for liberty. He was pursued by several persons, who captured and bound him after a terrible struggle. He is now heavily ironed and chained down to the floor of his cell. Public curiosity is highly excited over the mysterious veiled visitant who furnished him the club, but the prisoner preserves a dogged and obstinate silence regarding her, and nothing is known of her in the town."

"Oh, poor fellow!" cried Jaquelina, quite involuntarily, as he paused. "Chained to the floor of his cell! How dreadful!"

"You are not sorry for the wretch—are you, Lina?" said her uncle, looking at her in surprise.

"Yes—very sorry," she said, shuddering at the thought of the gloomy prison cell, and the clanking chains that held Gerald Huntington down from the free, wild woodland life he loved.

"Well, you hadn't ought to be sorry," said Mrs. Meredith, who had come in from the spring-house with the fresh butter and milk for tea, with Dollie trotting behind her, a great, red apple in either chubby fist; "his capture made you two hundred dollars the richer—if you hadn't spent every dollar of it so foolishly," she added, as an after-thought, and in an injured tone, for she had been deeply offended at the way in which Jaquelina had spent her money. "She had ought to have given it to her uncle to pay for her keep," was her frankly expressed opinion.

Jaquelina made no answer to Mrs. Meredith's taunt. She was looking at her uncle wistfully.

"Uncle Charles, did you stop at the post-office?" she asked, shyly.

"Why, certainly. How did I come by the newspaper, else?" inquired the farmer, with a sly twinkle of his gray eyes.

"Were—were there any letters for me?" said the girl, coloring under his laughing glance.

"Two," said Mr. Meredith, "and only the day before yesterday there were two. It seems as if Mr. Valchester has nothing to do but write love-letters."

He fished the mail out of his coat pocket as he spoke, and gave her the two letters.

She caught them eagerly from his hand and hurried from the room.

"Two of the love-sickest ninnies ever I saw," sniffed Mrs. Meredith, disdainfully. "Everlastingly writing back and forth to each other. I should think they'd run out of news."

"Tut, tut, wife," said the farmer, gaily, "don't be hard on the young folks. Don't you remember when you and I were sparking at singing school that winter, how many little notes we kept passing to each other? And no news in any of them, either—nothing but love, love, love."

Mrs. Meredith turned her back at this juncture, but the homely reminiscence must have had its effect on her. Her sharp tongue was silenced for awhile. She busied herself in setting the appetizing supper on the small table, then went out to the door and called Jaquelina in to the meal.

Jaquelina, sitting under a maple tree that was beginning to turn crimson under the kisses of September, returned an answer to the effect that she was not hungry, and did not desire any supper.

"Always the way," said Mrs. Meredith, returning to the table and supplying Dollie with her portion of mush and milk. "After she gets one of them letters from that solemn-looking, long-legged beau of hers, she is that excited she can't swallow a bite to eat. Say what you will, Charlie Meredith, you can't prove that ever I lost my appetite while you courted me."

Mr. Meredith only laughed as he drew up his chair to the table, and Lina was left unmolested to read and re-read the closely written letter in which her lover poured out his affection clothed in the beautiful imagery of a poetic heart.

"My darling," wrote Ronald Valchester, "as our bridal day is now only two weeks off, I have one request to make of you. As our wedding is to be such a simple and quiet one in the little country church, will you not wear, just to please me, the pretty white robe you wore on the night I saw you first? Never mind what others say. It is a beautiful dress, and you will be beautiful in it. I have a fancy for you to wear it in the moment when you give yourself to me—the happiest moment of my life. Afterwards you shall have silks and satins, laces and jewels, if you care for these things. I shall be with you the day before the wedding. My mother will accompany me. I will tell you in confidence, darling, she is a very proud and stately old lady. But you must not be afraid of her. I know she cannot help but love you, as I know you cannot help but love her. I have had a kind letter recently, from Walter Earle, and a charming note from Violet, in which she tells me you have asked her to be your bridesmaid and she has consented. Violet is a very sweet and lovely girl. I am glad you are such friends with her."

This and a great deal more Ronald Valchester wrote to his betrothed.

She pored over it fondly, and blushingly kissed the page where the dear white hand had rested while it traced the loving words.

Mrs. Meredith had spoken truly when she said that Jaquelina could never eat when she received one of those letters from Ronald. They filled her heart and soul so fully that mere material food seemed unnecessary.

The young heart which had gone hungering for love so long, and suffered isolation through all its dreary years of orphanage, was steeped to its depths in the golden glamour of first love's bewildering dream.

She rose at last and wandered down to the little brook and sat down to watch its dimpling flow with dreamy dark eyes.

Mrs. Meredith forbore to call her to help with the milking or tend Dollie as she had been wont to do.

Since Jaquelina had returned home with the added polish of her boarding-school upon her, and more especially since she had become the affianced of the proud Ronald Valchester, the coarse woman had stood somewhat in awe of her husband's graceful and refined niece. A newly awakened and resentful sense of vague inferiority made her feel ill at ease in her company.

The sun was setting goldenly and warmly as it does under Virginia's skies in the golden month of September. The soft sounds of early autumn filled the balmy air. Slowly the gold and purple and crimson of sunset faded from the sky, and gave place to dusky twilight.

Jaquelina scarcely noticed it. She did not feel the soft dew falling on her face and hands. She was lost in a sweet and dreamy revery.

Yet suddenly, with an inexplicable start and shiver, she lifted her eyes.

In the silence that seemed only more audible by the low, melodious murmur of the streamlet, she had caught a strange sound—not a voice, not a footstep—only the cold, heavy clank of an iron chain.

When she looked up she saw a man standing on the opposite side of the brook, and looking across at her with steadfast, gleaming eyes.

He was a tall man, dressed in ragged clothing like a common tramp. His face was blackened to the hue of a negro's by soot or charcoal, but the finely molded features were those of a white man. In the waning light Jaquelina could see that his wrists were manacled, and heavy irons were fastened about his ankles, from which depended chains that had been severed in two.