It is a lonely thoroughfare, that North Elba road. Not many teams pass to and fro, and the clattering stage was still a mile away. The eternal peaks alone looked down upon these two, for it is not likely that even the leveled glass of any hermit of the mountain-tops saw what passed between them.

Only, from Algonquin and Tahawus there came a gay little wind—the first brisk puff of autumn—and frolicking through a yellow tree in the forsaken door-yard it sent fluttering about them a shower of drifting gold.

THE END