“Yet weep, soft children of the Spring;
     The feelings Love alone can bring
     Have been denied to you!”

With the quick and crafty modesty of her sex, Julia evaded this very pleasant shaft by saying:  “How much you know, August!  How do you learn it?”

[Illustration:  A talk with A plowman.]

And August was pleased, partly because of the compliment, but chiefly because in saying it Julia had brought the sun-bonnet in such a range that he could see the bright eyes and blushing face at the bottom of this camera-oscura.  He did not hasten to reply.  While the vision lasted he enjoyed the vision.  Not until the sun-bonnet dropped did he take up the answer to her question.

“I don’t know much, but what I do know I have learned out of your Uncle Andrew’s books.”

“Do you know my Uncle Andrew?  What a strange man he is!  He never comes here, and we never go there, and my mother never speaks to him, and my father doesn’t often have anything to say to him.  And so you have been at his house.  They say he has all up-stairs full of books, and ever so many cats and dogs and birds and squirrels about.  But I thought he never let anybody go up-stairs.”

“He lets me,” said August, when she had ended her speech and dropped her sun-bonnet again out of the range of his eyes, which, in truth, were too steadfast in their gaze.  “I spend many evenings up-stairs.”  August had just a trace of German in his idiom.

“What makes Uncle Andrew so curious, I wonder?”

“I don’t exactly know.  Some say he was treated not just right by a woman when he was a young man.  I don’t know.  He seems happy.  I don’t wonder a man should be curious though when a woman that he loves treats him not just right.  Any way, if he loves her with all his heart, as I love Jule Anderson!”

These last words came with an effort.  And Julia just then remembered her errand, and said, “I must hurry,” and, with a country girl’s agility, she climbed over the fence before August could help her, and gave him another look through her bonnet-telescope from the other Hide, and then hastened on to return the tea, und to tell Mrs. Malcolm that there was to be a Millerite preacher at the school-house on Sunday night.  And August found that his horses were quite cool, while he was quite hot.  He cleaned his mold board, and swung his plow round, and then, with a “Whoa! haw!” and a pull upon the single line which Western plowmen use to guide their horses, he drew the team into their place, and set himself to watching the turning of the rich, fragrant black earth.  And even as he set his plowshare, so he set his purpose to overcome all obstacles, and to marry Julia Anderson.  With the same steady, irresistible, onward course would he overcome all that lay between him and the soul that shone out of the face that dwelt in the bottom of the sun-bonnet.