ILLUSTRATIONS

“’How sweet the breath beneath the hill
Of Sharon’s lovely rose’” (Frontispiece)

   “Do you know Miss Betty?”

   “Looking up, he discovered his visitors”

   “They crossed over to speak to her”

   “She chose a chest of drawers”

CHAPTER FIRST.

Things begin to happen.

“A magician most profound in his art.”

It was Sunday afternoon.  The griffins on the doorstep stared straight before them with an expression of utter indifference; the feathery foliage of the white birch swayed gently back and forth; the peonies lifted their crimson heads airily; the snowball bush bent under the weight of its white blooms till it swept the grass; the fountain splashed softly.

    “’By cool Siloam’s shady rill
        How fair the lily grows,’”

Rosalind chanted dreamily.

Grandmamma had given her the hymn book, telling her to choose a hymn and commit it to memory, and as she turned the pages this had caught her eye and pleased her fancy.

“It sounds like the Forest of Arden,” she said, leaning back on the garden bench and shutting her eyes.

    “’How sweet the breath beneath the hill
        Of Sharon’s lovely rose.’”

She swung her foot in time to the rhythm.  She was not sure whether a rill was a fountain or a stream, so she decided, as there was no dictionary convenient, to think of it as like the creek where it crossed the road at the foot of Red Hill.

Again she looked at the book; skipping a stanza, she read:—­

    “’By cool Siloam’s shady rill
        The lily must decay;
      The rose that blooms beneath the hill
        Must shortly pass away.’”

The melancholy of this was interesting; at the same time it reminded her that she was lonely.  After repeating, “Must shortly pass away,” her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.

“Now I am not going to cry,” she said sternly, and by way of carrying out this resolve she again closed her eyes tight.  It was desperately hard work, and she could not have told whether two minutes or ten had passed when she was startled by an odd, guttural voice close to her asking, “What is the matter, little girl?”

If the voice was strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was stranger still.  A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with eyes so bright they made her uneasy.

“Nothing,” she answered, rising hastily.

But the visitor continued to stand there and smile at her, shaking his head and repeating, “Mustn’t cry.”

“I am not crying,” Rosalind insisted, glancing over her shoulder to make sure of a way of escape.

With a long, thin finger this strange person now pointed toward the house, saying something she understood to be an inquiry for Miss Herbert.