Not a breath of air was stirring.  Her voice rang out upon the stillness, clear and shrill as a wild bird’s.  It was such a voice as you frequently meet with among country-girls, entirely uncultivated, but of great power, and, on some notes, of wonderful sweetness.  Her admiring listener rested upon his oars, letting his skiff drift along upon the tide.  It floated underneath the tree, and up into “the Crick.”  As it passed, I saw, in the bottom of the boat, a little basket of wild cherries.

While watching their progress, I heard a rustling among some alder-bushes that grew about a fence, and, upon looking that way, saw David.  He, too, was watching the play, though he had not, like me, the benefit of a seat in the gallery.

The expression on his countenance was something like what I had seen on the faces of people at the theatre:  a sort of fixed, immovable look, as if its wearer were determined on being sensation-proof.

I glanced at the skiff.  The Doctor’s boy was throwing cherries at Mary Ellen, and she was catching them in her mouth.  She was in a great frolic, laughing, showing her pretty teeth, and so earnest that one might suppose life had no other object than catching wild cherries.

Just then I perceived, a little to the right of me, the head and shoulders of a woman rising slowly above the bank, and recognized at once the small features and peculiarly small gray eyes of Miss Joey.  She had been gathering marsh-rosemary along-shore.

She, too, was a spectator of the play,—­was, in part, an actor in it; for, while David’s eyes were fixed upon the boat, hers were fixed upon him, and with the same despairing expression.

“Poor Miss Joey!” I said mentally, “doomed to see your beautiful plan fail and come to nought!  You and he suffer the same suffering, but it can be no bond between you.”

She turned, and slowly descended the bank, and I watched her small figure as it picked its way among the rocks, and finally disappeared around a point.

Meanwhile the voyagers had landed, and were making their way to the house.  I could see them until they reached the garden-gate, could see Mary Ellen swinging her sun-bonnet by its string, and hear her laughing, as she tried to mock the katydids.

Then I looked for David.  The feeling came over me that I was in some magnificent theatre, where I was like a king, having a play acted for me alone.  David was lying upon the ground, with his face buried in the damp grass.

No matter how much we may read of the effects of great sorrow or great happiness, they will always, in real life, come to us as something we never heard of.  I involuntarily turned my head aside, feeling that I was where I had no right to be, that I had intruded my profane presence into the innermost sanctuary of a human heart.

While I was debating whether to remain concealed, or to go to him, throw my arms around him, and say some word of comfort, he arose and walked slowly towards the house.  And I noticed that he went by exactly the same route which the two had taken before him,—­which brought to mind Miss Joey’s expression, “as if there’d ben a chain a-drawin’ him.”