So Winifred strayed up the road about a quarter of a mile, till she came to the gate of the Harmon garden.  The old house, always half concealed, was quickly being entirely hidden by the massive Curtains the young leaves were so busily weaving.  The tanager turned in here, as what bird would not when it spied a tract of ground where Nature was riotously decking a bower with the products of all the roots and seeds of a deserted garden!  There was many a gap in the weather-beaten fence where the child might have followed, but she dare not, for she was in great awe of the place, because the preacher who was said to have died and come to life again lived there.  She only stood and looked through the fence, and the tanager—­having flitted near the house—­soared and settled among the feathery boughs of a proud acacia tree; she had to look across half an acre of bushes to see him, and then he was so high and so far that it seemed (as when looking at the stars) she did not see him, but only the ray of scarlet light that travelled from him through an atmosphere of leaflets.  It was very trying, for any one knows that it is something to be able to say that you have come to close quarters with a scarlet tanager.

Winifred, stooping and looking through the fence, soon heard the college bell jangle; she knew that it was nine o’clock, and boys and masters were being ingathered for morning work.  The college buildings in their bare enclosure stood on the other side of the road.  Winifred would have been too shy to pass the playground while the boys were out, but now that every soul connected with the place would be indoors, she thought she might go round the sides of the Harmon garden and see the red bird much nearer from a place she thought of.

This place was nothing but a humble, disused, and untidy burying-ground, that occupied the next lot in the narrow strip of land that here for a mile divided road and river.  Winifred ran over the road between the Harmon garden and the college fence, and, climbing the log fence, stood among the quiet gravestones that chronicled the past generations of Chellaston.  Here grass and wild flowers grew apace, and close by ran the rippling river reflecting the violet sky above.  A cemetery, every one knows, is a place where any one may walk or sit as long as he likes, but Winifred was surprised to find Principal Trenholme’s housekeeper there before her; and moreover, this staid, sad woman was in the very place Winifred was going to, for she was looking through the fence that enclosed the Harmon garden.

“Good morning, Mrs. Martha,” said Winifred politely, concealing her surprise.

“I’ve been milking,” said the sad woman, glancing slightly at a pail of foaming milk that she had set for greater security between two grave-heaps.

Winifred came and took her place beside the housekeeper, and they both looked through the paling of the Harmon property.