have loved him all these years," I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling, "never tell me that you will not be each other's afterward."

And at least no one need dispute me who cannot prove the contrary!

"But where-where?" cried Miss Willie-poor little Miss Willie, echoing the cry of every one in the world! It was very strange to see this little vial of spiced cordial wondering about the immortality of love.

"I don't know where or how," I said, helplessly, "but believe it and you'll

see."

Dear, dear, how I reproached myself later to think that I could have said no more than that! Many a fine response that I might have made I compounded afterward—all about love that is infinite and eternal, so that it fills all the universe and one cannot get beyond it― and so on, in long phrases; but there in that box not one other word could I say. And yet, when one thinks of it, what is there to say when one is asked about this, save simply, "I don't know how or where-but believe it and you'll see !"

We said little else, and I sat there with all that great company of blue and pink waists dancing about me through my tears in a fashion that would have astonished them. It was as if the heart of all the world were beating there in the box beside me.

So much for Miss Willie as an instance in my forthcoming argument with Peleas about every one in the world loving some one! Miss Willie had gone over to his side of the case outright. I began to doubt that there would be any argument. Still there was always Nichola. If all the world fell in love and went quite mad, there would yet be Nichola, fluting her "Yah !" to any such notion.

I fancy that neither Miss Willie nor I heard very much of that last act, in spite of its moonlit chalet among the leaves. But one picture I carried away with me, and the sound of one voice. They were those of a girl in her happiness waiting in the door of the chalet.

"Dear," she said to her sweetheart, "if we had never met, if we had never

seen each other, it seems as if the love that I bear you would yet have followed you, without my knowing. Maybe some day you would have heard it knocking at your heart-and you would have called it a wish, or a dream.”

Afterward I recalled that I was saying those words over as we made our way up the aisle.

We were almost the last to leave the theater-I like that final glimpse of a haunted place where happy people have just been. We found the coupé, and a frantic carriage man put us in, ven gently, though he banged the door in that fashion which seems to be the only outlet to a carriage man's emotions.

"Good-night," said Miss Willie Lillieblade at my door, and gave my hand an unwonted squeeze. I knew why. Dear. starved heart, she must have longed for years to talk about that boy, and one is ever tender to one's confidante. I watched her coupé roll toward the great. lonely house. Never tell me that the boy who died in Switzerland was not beside her hearth waiting her coming!

Our drawing-room was dimly lighted I took off my bonnet there and found myself longing for my tea. I am wont to ring the bell for Nichola only upon very stately occasions, and certainly not at times when, in her eyes, I tremble upon the brink of "losing my immortal soul at this late day." Accordingly I went down to the kitchen.

I cautiously pushed open the door. for I am frankly afraid of Nichola, who is in everything a frightful nonconform ist. There was no fire on the hearth. but the bracket lamp was lighted, and on a chair lay Nichola's best shawi. Nichola, in her black gown and wearing her best bonnet, was just arranging the tea things on a tray.

"I'm glad that you've been out. Nichola," said I, very gently-as gently as a truant child, I fancy !—" it is such a beautiful day."

may bring the tea up at once, and mind that there is plenty of hot water!"

Then I scurried upstairs, my old heart beating at my daring. I had actually ordered Nichola about! I half expected in consequence that she would bring me up cold coffee, but she came up quietly enough, with some delicious tea and crumpets. At the door, with unwonted meekness, she asked me if everything were right; and I, not abating one jot of my majesty, told her that there might be a bit more butter for the crumpets. She even brought that, and left me marveling. I could as readily imagine the kitchen range with an emotion as Nichola with a guilty conscience, and yet-sometimes I have a guilty conscience myself, and I always act first very self-sufficient and then very humble, just like Nichola.

When she was putting on the dessert that night at my solitary dinner, she spoke; and if the kitchen range had kissed a hand at me, I would not have been more amazed.

'Every one took their parts very well this afternoon, I thought," she stiffly volunteered.

I looked at her blankly. Then slowly it dawned upon me: The best shawl, the guilty conscience-Nichola had been to the matinée !

Nichola !" I said, "were you"Certain," she said curtly. "I ain't no call to be no more careful of my soul than what you are."

I-the keeper of Nichola, who has bullied Peleas and me about for years!

Did-did you like it, Nichola?" I asked, doubtfully, a little unaware how to treat a discussion of original sin like this.

"Yes, I did," she replied, unexpectedly, "But do you believe all of it?"

"Believe that it really happened?" I asked in bewilderment.

"No," said Nichola, nervously catching up a corner of the tablecloth in her brown fingers. "Believe that that she said-in the door, there?"

it. An' mebbe you'd 'a' heard it somewheres an' 'a' thought it was a wish, or a dream.' That part," said Nichola.

And then I understood-I understood. "Nichola !" I said, "Yes! I believe it with all my heart! I know it is so!" Nichola looked at me wistfully.

"But wishes may be just wishes," she said, "an' when you dream nights it may be just dreamin' nights—” "Most

"Never!" I cried, positively.

of the time they are the voices of the people who would love us, if they were alive."

Old Nichola's face, with its gray moss hair about it and its little unremembering eyes, seldom changes expression, save to look angry. I think, like the carriage man slamming all the doors, that Nichola relieves all emotion by anger. When I die I expect that she will drive every one out of the house with the broom in proof of her grief. Therefore I was not surprised to see her look at me now with a sudden frown and flush that should have terrorized me.

"Heaven over us !" she said, turning abruptly, "the silly folks who dream! I've never dreamed a thing in my life. Do you want more whipped cream ?"

66

No," I said, gently. "No, Nichola." I was not deceived. Nichola knew it and banged the door, muttering. But I was not deceived. I knew what she had meant. Nichola! that old woman whose life had some way been cast up on this barren coast near the citadel of the love of Peleas and me-Nichola, who had lived lonely in the grim company of the duties of a household not her own-Nichola, at sixty-odd, to be welcoming the belief that the love which she never had inspired was some way about her, all the time!

Where was my side of the argument to be held with Peleas? Where indeed? But I was glad to see it go.

All the evening I sat quietly before the fire. There was no need for books. The drawing-room was warm and bright.

BY

V

66

HALE

ERMONT is a region of wonderful picturesque beauty. The fields are very fertile, and it has proved to have great agricultural resources. For myself, I have never seen fields of clover which compared with the rich clover fields of Vermont when clover is in blossom. I suppose there are such fields elsewhere, but I never saw them. All the same, the first white settlement of Vermont was as late as the year 1724, when Fort Dummer, in the southern part of the State, was built by the Province of Massachusetts. But, as has been said, no considerable number of settlers went in until the Peace of 1762 made that frontier of New England secure against foreign invasion. It was a frontier State, and, as I said in speaking of Maine just now, it was a field of war, not of peace.

For some reason or other there were no native residents there at the time when our first white colonists landed, so men say. It was by a sort of common consent on the part of the Indians who lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, I think, that when, in hunting, the Indians met each other there they did not cut each other's throats. I

am apt to think, however, also, that if a party of Iroquois crossed from central New York into that region, they would have fought against the Indians of New England, who were their standing en

emies.

Remember that the Iroquois Copyright, 1905, by the Outlook Company.

vocabulary was absolutely different from that of the New England tribes, and so were their methods of social life and their warfare. Has any one ever heard of a New England Indian burning a prisoner to death, as the Iroquois undoubtedly did?

Anyway, what is sure is that there was no resident population of Indians, though in summer they went down to Lake Champlain, having fished and hunted deer up and down through the valleys.

While the New Hampshire mountains rest mostly on granite, the mountain range of the Green Mountains which runs through Vermont rests on slates and shales which were often tipped up almost perpendicularly.

So it happens that the mountains of Vermont are more picturesque, on the whole, than are the New Hampshire mountains. That sort of puddingy aspect which people criticise in our dear Mount Washington hardly appears in the Green Mountains. For the same reason the river gorges are more like the cañons of the West than any other valleys in New England. The story is a familiar one of the country doctor who, pressing his horse home at midnight over a bridge which he had crossed by daylight, found the horse very unwilling to go. It proved next day that he had pressed the horse along a stringpiece of the bridge, from which the boards had been washed away since he passed early in the day. This

story is told. perfectly authenticated. I should say, of one of the streams which flows into Lake Champlain. It is told just as well authenticated in Berkshire County in Massachusetts. The reader may judge whether the same thing happened twice. What I know is that it might have happened at either of these gorges. The walls of the torrent in both cases are a sort of slaty shale which rises perpendicular from the water.

The civilized history of Vermont begins only when the incursions of Indians and Jesuits ceased with Wolfe's victory. Then began a sort of enthusiasm for settlement of those beautiful valleys. There are still extant the records of the parties which were sent in one or another town of Connecticut, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, and some of their marching songs. Thus there grew up the sturdy set of Green Mountain boys who give such picturesqueness to the history of that whole region. In 1777 the English Governors of Canada hoped that they should seduce these people from allegiance to the Conti

here to see how they do things in Ve mont. You see, there are no very her cities.

Burlington, the largest of the all, is a model city for the world to ta note of and keep in memory.

I like to put in here a description : Burlington which I made in a speec before Alpha Delta Phi at its an convention in New York in 1888. It had, not long before, a friendly passag with Matthew Amold, who had s rather carelessly that there was noth "distinguished" in America.

When I heard in conversation th criticism, which I have never seen, abcthe absence of anything" distinguished in our cities. I asked myself what

nental Congress, which had never done anything for them. One of them was imprudent enough to ask Ira Allen to accept the governorship of Vermont as a premium to be paid him if he would give over Vermont to the King's troops and Royal allegiance. "He offered to make me Governor of Vermont," said Allen, "the same as the devil offered Jesus Christ all the kingdoms of the world, and the poor critter did not own an inch of the kingdoms of the world, and no more did the Governor of Canada own an inch of Vermont."

From that day to this day Vermont has earned the name, among people who knew anything about it, of a model democracy. I wish that one of the intelligent Swiss writers of government would come over

the last America: city I had visited: my winter trave's As it happened.: was one of the smallest of America cities-the city: Burlington, in the State of Vermont I may be told tha there was noth distinguished the Perhaps not; but i know that, as we entered the town. 2 I looked back or

of the

all day, but were now rosy red in the glory of the setting su I thought it was one of the nobles visions I had ever looked upon. I turned back to look upon the clouds of sunsetto see, far away, the sun as he wen down between the broken range Adirondack Mountains. Between was the white ice of Lake Champlain. S far as nature has anything to offer to the eye, I had certainly never seen in the travels of forty years any position chose for a city more likely to impress a trayeler as remarkable, and to live always his memory. I had been summoned t Burlington on an errand connected with the public administration of charity. was supposed that, as I came from Bes ton, I knew how cities ought to be goerned. Anyway, I was up there as an