unnoticed in the amount of interesting matter they had found to discuss, and soon their long shadows were passing over the yellow dust of the road, and then out along the fences where the new grass was greening the fields. In the house back of the store were heard the sound of voices and some boys laughing, the clatter of dishes, and clink of the poker and metal lids of the stove. Someone chased a dog out of the house, throwing a broom after him to hasten his movements, and adding a shrill accusation concerning his weakness for stealing from an oven.

His dogship looked back furtively, but was too wise to return, and made his way in stately unconcern into the back door of the store-room, knowing well that under one corner of the counter was a nook from which no one dared turn him. But passing the open front door he paused, turned his soft steps over the threshold to a figure that sat on the steps with bowed head leaning on its open hands, and then the fear of broomsticks seemed driven out by some sympathy, and he crept closely and softly under the arms of the man Bud, and looked up into his face with eyes tender as the afterglow tinging the clouds; for the sun had gone down beyond the mountain.

CHAPTER III.

DINAH AND DON.

"Oh! had I the wings of a dove!" chanted a voice on the heights, and was immediately taken to account by another voice, a masculine one, asking: “In which direction would they take you, Dinah ?"

The speakers, the young lady of the roan bit of horse

flesh, and a man-another man-were throned on a peak that looked high enough for the wily Lucifer to use for his temptation scene. The ends of the earth might not be visible, but a good deal of the other part was, and lay spread out to the west, a green plain, away below the mountain, merging into blue in the distance, and the sunshine of May over it all.

"Which way would you go?" repeated the bantering voice. "Tom Saxe! is away over those mountains to the east, and by this time Ned March is across considerable prairie to the west, and I myself am here. In which direc tion are you going, Dinah?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Don. You're as bad as Aunt Lottie. She never got married herself, and neither will you, but you both seem disposed to make a present of me and a marriage certificate to every man who speaks to me twice. I am tired of being so badly given away.”

The man stretched on the grass near her laughed and plucked some purple violets to add to the store in her lap.

"But I don't want to give you away at all," he protested. << Give you away! There is desolation in the thought. What a lonely outcast I should be here without you.”

"You have a host of tenants for company, if you want to cultivate them," she said, a little maliciously.

"Yes, and am an alien among them. Poor as I am, this gift of wild land is a white elephant on my hands."

"Poor! Is there any good and sufficient reason why you should be so poverty-stricken after having a generous allowance for years?" asked the young lady with some asperity.

He laughed again; in fact, he had the careless, gracious manner to which laughter is close kindred; then it was becoming, he had such fine teeth.

"Not a reason in the world," he said, easily, “except that

my riches always have such restless wings, and my pockets always have holes through which I lose my pennies."

"Poor child! Well, he shall have one penny for luck;" and she dived her hand into some receptacle among her draperies. "There is a nice big one to start your fortune with in the mountains."

He reached for the penny, but held her fingers as well. "I need something to bring me new luck," he said, contemplating her hand and wrist very attentively. "I wonder if you know how much, Dinah? Did-did you hear all of this late law of the old man's? and-"

She drew her fingers leisurely from his own as she said: "Don't you think that term rather irreverent for your uncle? Don, you are degenerating sadly."

"I know it"-but his contrition did not quite chase away his smile; "that is what the governor has decided; and after giving me rope enough to hang myself with for the past ten years, he suddenly gets straight-laced himself and vows that I must do likewise, dear old fellow! He means well, but reformation is hard work."

"Yes, it is," agreed the girl, with the sympathetic sigh of a veteran sinner; and then they both laughed. But the laugh of the man was not a very merry one; gloomy, impatient thought followed it closely.

"If he had only let me foster that old ambition of mine -the music," he said, regretfully, "I might not have had so many sins to reform of. I sold my birthright for the pottage of pastime. I was too much of a boy to know that a man's life must have something stronger to do in the world than hunt pleasure; but I know it now. And crazy as I was over music, I did not realize fully, when I was ridiculed and coaxed into giving it up, that it was the only thing in life I was fit for. I know that too, now."

"Is it too late?"

He flung his head up impatiently, and then dropped it forward in his hands. The voice of the girl was kind and was interested, but one must feel something more deep than kindly interest in the voice of another before it is possible to break open for his gaze the vault in which our dreams are locked. Those wraiths of past hopes whose sighs we strive to drown with the sound of our laughter, how they creep close in unguarded moments and show us their fair lost faces! And our hands, assoiled of the world, can no longer touch them, and the glimmer of tears in their shadowy eyes fashions heart-aches against which we rebel and are slow to acknowledge. Ah! those ghosts of the things that were to be!

"Have you gone asleep there, Don? We were speaking of the music. Is it too late for-"

"Yes, much too late; too late to go back, too late to begin anew-too late for everything but regret."

The girl watched him dreamily for a little, and suddenly asked:

"Don, there is something puzzling to me in the bitter dislike the senior has shown to any musical leanings of yours. It is all at variance with his usual indulgence. Auntie became dumb when I spoke to her of it. The taste for it is surely inherited from your mother. Her voice made her a reputation to be proud of, and from her picture she must have been beautiful; and how Donald Senior could have disliked such a lovely creature-”

"I always fancied that it was not dislike at all that kept them apart," he answered. "Perhaps it was liking; and that was worse, I suppose, since she was his brother's wife."

"Oh! but why should he object to a musical career for you?"

"Heaven only knows, I don't. The force of the objec

tion is all I know, and my own promise to give it up that I was coaxed and ridiculed into. But let's talk of other things, or I'll be blue as indigo."

"Never mind; may be some good luck is awaiting you in these mountains."

"May be;" and he laughed shortly. "You are the only good luck I have found so far, and mighty thankful I have reason to be to you. Oh, yes," he added, with a smile struggling upward over a sigh; "yes, the world lends. me more bright gleams than I deserve, no doubt, and you have been one of the brightest.'

"You are a humbug, Don," she said, promptly. It is Aunt Lottie you mean to say that of, and you know it. She was the prime mover in our exodus from civilization. You simply took advantage of that benighted creature's fondness for you to inveigle her out here."

"Do you suppose I wanted to come into exile alone?" “And I am the martyr of your reformation-isn't that what you call this vacation from the world?—and my martyrdom is not even crowned with appreciation. I am simply voted a 'crank,' as martyrs always are by their contemporaries. Ah me!" But her lugubrious sigh awakened no pity.

"Who is the humbug now?" he asked. believe you will ever be a martyr for anyone. an idea, Dinah, of something you might be." "Well?"

"I do not

But I have

"A good anchor for a man who needs a cool head and clear eyes beside him; and, Dinah-"

"Yes," she said, rising to her feet, " at the studio they told me I had a very correct eye.

The more the pity that

I lacked the application of a student."

He arose too, looking down at her, and needing his generous stature to do it, for she was not petite.