Chad could scarcely hear Miss Jennie’s happy chatter, scarcely saw the shaking curls, the eyes all but in a frenzy of rolling.  His eyes were in the back of his head, and his backward-listening ears heard only Margaret’s laugh behind him.

“Oh, I do love the autumn”—­it was at the foot of those steps, thought Chad, that he first saw Margaret springing to the back of her pony and dashing off under the fir trees—­” and it’s coming.  There’s one scarlet leaf already”—­Chad could see the rock fence where he had sat that spring day—­ “it’s curious and mournful that you can see in any season a sign of the next to come.”  And there was the creek where he found Dan fishing, and there the road led to the ford where Margaret had spurned his offer of a slimy fish—­ugh!  “I do love the autumn.  It makes me feel like the young woman who told Emerson that she had such mammoth thoughts she couldn’t give them utterance—­why, wake up, Mr. Buford, wake up!” Chad came to with a start.

“Do you know you aren’t very polite, Mr. Buford?” Mr. Buford!  That did sound funny.

“But I know what the matter is,” she went on.  “I saw you look”—­she nodded her head backward.  “Can you keep a secret?” Chad nodded; he had not yet opened his lips.

“Thae’s going to be a match back there.  He’s only a few years older.  The French say that a woman should be half a man’s age plus seven years.  That would make her only a few years too young, and she can wait.”  Chad was scarlet under the girl’s mischievous torture, but a cry from the house saved him.  Dan was calling them back.

“Mr. Hunt has to go back early to drill the Rifles.  Can you keep another secret?” Again Chad nodded gravely.  “Well, he is going to drive me back.  I’ll tell him what a dangerous rival he has.”  Chad was dumb; there was much yet for him to learn before he could parry with a tongue like hers.

“He’s very good-looking,” said Miss Jennie, when she joined the girls, “but oh, so stupid.”

Margaret turned quickly and unsuspiciously.  “Stupid!  Why, he’s the first man in his class.”

“Oh,” said Miss Jennie, with a demure smile, “perhaps I couldn’t draw him out,” and Margaret flushed to have caught the deftly tossed bait so readily.

A moment later the Lieutenant was gathering up the reins, with Miss Jennie by his side.  He gave a bow to Margaret, and Miss Jennie nodded to Chad.

“Come see me when you come to town, Mr. Buford,” she called, as though to an old friend, and still Chad was dumb, though he lifted his hat gravely.

At no time was Chad alone with Margaret, and he was not sorry—­her manner so puzzled him.  The three lads and three girls walked together through Mrs. Dean’s garden with its grass walks and flower beds and vegetable patches surrounded with rose bushes.  At the lower edge they could see the barn with sheep in the yard around it, and there were the very stiles where Harry and Margaret had sat in state when Dan and Chad were charging in the tournament.  The thing might never have happened for any sign from Harry or Dan or Margaret, and Chad began to wonder if his past or his present were a dream.