They rode on next morning in a rough road between clearings in the forest, the boy and girl being again together on the colt’s back, she in front.

“You did not have your fortune told,” said Miss Margaret.

“It has been told,” Jack answered.  “I am to be married in England to a beautiful young lady.  I thought that sounded well and that I had better hold on to it.  I might go further and fare worse.”

“Tell me the kind of girl you would fancy.”

“I wouldn’t dare tell you.”

“Why?”

“For fear it would spoil my luck.”

They rode on with light hearts under a clear sky, their spirits playing together like birds in the sunlight, touching wings and then flying apart, until it all came to a climax quite unforeseen.  The story has been passed from sire to son and from mother to daughter in a certain family of central New York and there are those now living who could tell it.  These two were young and beautiful and well content with each other, it is said.  So it would seem that Fate could not let them alone.

“We are near our journey’s end,” said he, by and by.

“Oh, then, let us go very slowly,” she urged.

Another step and they had passed the hidden gate between reality and enchantment.  It would appear that she had spoken the magic words which had opened it.  They rode, for a time, without further speech, in a land not of this world, although, in some degree, familiar to the best of its people.  Only they may cross that border who have kept much of the innocence of childhood and felt the delightful fear of youth that was in those two—­they only may know the great enchantment.  Does it not make an undying memory and bring to the face of age, long afterward, the smile of joy and gratitude?

The next word?  What should it be?  Both wondered and held their tongues for fear—­one can not help thinking—­and really they had little need of words.  The peal of a hermit thrush filled the silence with its golden, largo chime and overtones and died away and rang out again and again.  That voice spoke for them far better than either could have spoken, and they were content.

“There was no voice on land or sea so fit for the hour and the ears that heard it,” she wrote, long afterward, in a letter.

They must have felt it in the longing of their own hearts and, perhaps, even a touch of the pathos in the years to come.  They rode on in silence, feeling now the beauty of the green woods.  It had become a magic garden full of new and wonderful things.  Some power had entered them and opened their eyes.  The thrush’s song grew fainter in the distance.  The boy was first to speak.

“I think that bird must have had a long flight sometime,” he said.

“Why?”

“I am sure that he has heard the music of Paradise.  I wonder if you are as happy as I am.”

“I was never so happy,” she answered.