"But why?" she said.

"In novels, and poetry, and sometimes in real life, beautiful young women are fallen in love with, and then trouble is liable to begin," explained Tom with amiable gravity.

"There is no one to fall in love with me at the Cross-roads," said Sheba, sweetly. "I wish there was."

"Good Lord," exclaimed Tom, devoutly. "Come along to church, Sheba, and let's go in for fasting and prayer."

He took her to the "preaching" in the log cabin and noticed the effect of her entry on the congregation as they went in. There were a number of more or less awkward and raw-boned young male creatures whose lives were spent chiefly in cornfields and potato patches. They were uncomely hewers of wood and drawers of water, but they turned their heads to look at her, and their eyes followed her as she went to her seat. When she had sat down, those who could catch glimpses of her involuntarily craned their necks and sat in discomfort until the sermon was over. Tom recognised this fact, and in secret reflected upon it in all its bearings.

"Yes," he found himself saying, mentally; "I'd like to know how I'm going to do my duty by _this_. I don't believe there's a derned thing about it in 'Advice to Young Mothers.'"

The day wore on to its lovely end, and lost itself in one of the sunsets which seem to flood the sky with a tide of ripples of melted gold, here and there tipped with flame. When this was over, a clear, fair moon hung lighted in the heavens, and, flooding with silver what had been flooded with gold, changed the flame-tips to pearl.

Sheba strayed in the garden among the flowers. Tom, sitting under the vines of the porch, watched her white figure straying in and out among the shrubbery. At last he saw her standing on the grass in the full radiance of the moonlight, her hands hanging clasped behind her and her face turned upward to the sky. As she had wandered about, she had done a fanciful thing. She had made a wreath of white narcissus and laid it on her hair, and she had twisted together a sort of long garland of the same blossoms and cast it loosely round her waist.

"She never did that before," Tom said, as he watched her. "Good Lord!

what a picture she is, standing there with her face lifted. I wonder what she's thinking of."

"Uncle Tom," she said, when she sauntered back to him, "does the moonlight make you feel sad without being unhappy at all? That is what it does to me."

"It's the spring, Sheba," he said, as he had said it in the morning; "it's the spring."

She saw that he was looking at her flower garlands, and she broke into a shy little laugh.

"You see what you have done to me, Uncle Tom," she said; "now you have told me I am a beautiful young woman, I shall always be doing things to--to make myself look prettier."

She came on to the verandah to him, and he held out his hand to her.

"That's the spring, too, Sheba," he said.

She yielded as happily and naturally to the enfolding of his big arm in these days as she had done when she was a baby. No one but themselves knew what they were to each other.

They had always talked things over together--their affection, their pleasures, their simple anxieties and responsibilities. They had discussed her playthings in the first years of their friendship and her lessons when she had been a little girl. To-night the subject which began to occupy them had some seriousness of aspect. The changes time and the tide of war had made were bringing Tom face to face with a difficulty his hopeful, easy-going nature had never contemplated with any realising sense--the want of money, even the moderate amount the requirements of their simple lives made necessary.

"It's the taxes that a man can't stand up against," Tom said. "You may cut off all you like, and wear your old clothes, but there's a liveliness about taxes that takes the sand out of you. Talk about the green bay-tree flourishing and increasing, all a tax wants is to be let alone a few years. It'll come to its full growth without any sunning or watering.

Mine have had to be left alone for a while, and--well, here we are--another year, and----"

"Will the house be taken?" Sheba asked.

"If I can't pay up, it'll all go--house and store and all," Tom answered.

"Then _we_ shall have to go too."

He turned and looked ruefully at the face beneath the wreath of white narcissus.

"I wish it hadn't come on us just now," he said. "There's no particular season that trouble adds a charm to; but it seems to me that it's not entitled to the spring."

When she went upstairs she did not go to bed. The moonlight lured her out into the night again. Outside her window there was a little balcony. It was only of painted wood, as the rest of the house was, but a multiflora rose had climbed over it and hung it with a wonderful drapery, and, as she stood upon it, she unconsciously made herself part of a picture almost strange in its dramatic quality.

She looked out over the sleeping land to the mountains standing guard.

"Where should we go?" she said. "The world is on the other side."

She was not in the mood to observe sound, or she would have heard the clear stroke of a horse's hoofs on the road. She did not even hear the opening of the garden gate. She was lost in the silver beauty of the night, and a vague dreaming which had fallen upon her. On the other side of the purple of the mountains was the world. It had always been there and she had always been here. Presently she found herself sighing aloud, though she could not have told why.

"Ah!" she said as softly as young Juliet. "Ah, me!"

As she could not have told why she sighed, so there was no explanation of the fact that, having done so, she looked downward to the garden path, as if something had drawn her eyes there. It is possible that some attraction had so drawn them, for she found herself looking into a young, upturned face--the dark, rather beautiful face of a youth who stood and looked upward as if he had stopped involuntarily at sight of her.

She drew back with a little start and then bent her Narcissus-crowned head forward.

"Who--who is it?" she exclaimed.

He started himself at the sound of her voice. She had indeed looked scarcely a real creature a few moments ago. He took off his hat and answered:

"I am Rupert De Willoughby," he said. "I beg pardon for disturbing you.

It startled me to see you standing there. I came to see Mr. Thomas De Willoughby."

It was a singular situation. Perhaps the moonlight had something to do with it; perhaps the spring. They stood and looked at each other quite simply, as if they did not know that they were strangers. A young dryad and faun meeting on a hilltop or in a forest's depths by moonlight might have looked at each other with just such clear, unstartled eyes, and with just such pleasure in each other's beauty. For, of a truth, each one was thinking the same thing, innocently and with a sudden gladness.

As he had come up the garden-path, Rupert had seen a vision and had stopped unconsciously that instant. And Sheba, looking down, had seen a vision too--a beautiful face as young as her own, and with eyes that glowed.

"You don't know what you looked like standing there," said Rupert, as simply as the young faun might have spoken. "It was as if you were a spirit. The flowers in your hair looked like great white stars."

"Did they?" she said, and stood and softly gazed at him.

How the boy looked up at her young loveliness! He had never so looked at any woman before. And then a thought detached itself from the mists of memory and he seemed to remember.

"Are you Sheba?" he asked.

"Yes, I am Sheba," she answered, rather slowly. "And I remember you, too.

You are the boy."

He drew nearer to the balcony, laying his hand upon the multiflora rose creeper.

"Yes, yes," he said, almost tremulous with eagerness. "You bring it all back. You were a little child, and I----"

"You rode away," she said, "over the hill."

"Will you come down to me?" he said.

"Yes," she answered, and that moment disappeared.

He stood in the moonlight, his head bared, his straw hat in his hand. He felt as if he was in a dream. His face had lost its gloom and yearning, and his eyes looked like his mother's.

When he heard a light foot nearing him, he went forward, and they met with strange young smiles and took each other's hands. Nearer than the balcony, she was even a sweeter thing, and the scent of her white flowers floated about her.

As they stood so, smiling, Tom came and joined them. Sheba had called him as she passed his door.

Rupert turned round and spoke, vaguely conscious, as he did so, that his words sounded somewhat like words uttered in a dream and were not such as he had planned.