He knew that they all loved her, and it gave him a miserable feeling.  He felt that they were unworthy of her—­that they would not worship her always and become ministers for her sake, as he was going to do.  He even wondered if it wouldn’t be better, after all, to become a prize fighter and to knock them all out in the first round when he got a chance.

In a moment Juliet called him to her side and laid her hand upon his arm.  “He has promised not to rob birds’ nests and to love me always,” she said.

But the young men only laughed.

“Ask something harder,” retorted one.  “Any of us will do that.  Ask him to stand on his head or to tie himself into a bow knot for your sake.”

Nicholas reddened angrily, but Juliet told the jester to try such experiments himself—­that she did not want a contortionist about.  Then she bent over the boy as he said good-bye, and he went down the walk between the lilies and out into the lane.

He recrossed the green slowly, turning into the main street at the court-house steps.  As he passed the church, a little further on, the iron gate opened and the rector came out, jingling the heavy keys in his hand as he talked amicably to a tourist who followed upon his heels.

“Yes, my good sir,” he was saying in his high-pitched, emphatic utterance, “this dear old churchyard is never mowed except by living lawn-mowers.  I assure you that I have seen thirty heads of cattle upon the vaults—­positively, thirty heads, sir!”

But the boy’s thoughts were far from the church and its rector, and the words sifted rapidly through his brain.  He touched his hat at the tourist’s greeting and smiled into the clergyman’s face, but his actions were automatic.  He would have nodded to the horse in the street or have smiled at the sun.

As he passed the small shops fronting on the narrow sidewalk and followed the whitewashed fence of the college grounds until it ended at the Old Stage Road, he was conscious of the keen, pulsating harmony of life.  It was good to be alive—­to feel the warm sunshine overhead and the warm dust below.  He was glad that he had been born, though the idea had never formulated itself until now.  He would be very good all his life and never do a wicked thing.  It was so easy to be good if you only wanted to.  Yes, he would study hard and become learned in the law, like those old prophets with whom God spoke as man with man.  Then, when he had grown better and wiser than any one on earth, his tongue would become loosened, and he would go forth to preach the Gospel, and Juliet would listen to him for his wisdom’s sake.  Oh, if she would only love him best—­best of all!

This evening the road through the wood did not frighten him, though the sun was down.  He thought neither of the ghosts that Uncle Dan’l had seen, nor of the bug-a-boos that had chased Viney’s husband home.  He was too old for these things now.  He had grown taller and stronger in a day.  When he reached the pasture gate opposite the house he opened it and went in to look for the sheep.