Close to the minister’s armchair stood a small table covered with a snowy cloth, on which was placed the evening meal, consisting of strawberries, honey, bread, butter and milk.  At his feet lay the white cat, bathed in moonshine, and playing with a fragrant spray of honeysuckle which trailed within reach of her paws, and swung to and fro, like a spicy censer, as the soft breeze stole up from the starry south.  The supper was untasted, the old man’s silvered head leaned wearily on his shrunken hand, and through a tearful mist his mild eyes looked toward the churchyard, where gleamed the monumental shafts that guarded his mouldering household idols, his white-robed, darling dead.

His past was a wide, fair, fruitful field of hallowed labor, bounteous with promise for that prophetic harvest whereof God’s angels are reapers; and his future, whose near horizon was already rimmed with the light of eternity, was full of that blessed ’peace which passeth all understanding.’  Yet to-night, precious reminiscences laid their soft, mesmeric fingers on his heart, and before him, all unbidden, floated visions of other Maydays, long, long ago, when the queen of his boyish affections had worn her crown of flowers; and many, many years later, when, as the queen of his home, and the proud mother of his children, she had stood with her quivering hand nestled in his, listening breathlessly to the Mayday speech of their golden-haired daughter,

“Why does the sea of thought thus backward roll?  Memory’s the breeze that through the cordage raves, And ever drives us on some homeward shoal, As if she loved the melancholy waves That, murmuring shoreward, break o’er a reef of graves.”

The song of the mocking-bird still rang from the downy cradle of myrtle blossoms, and a whip-poor-will answered from a cedar in the churchyard, when the slamming of the parsonage gate startled the shy thrush that slept in the vines that overarched it, and Mr. Leigh came slowly up the walk, which was lined with purple and white lilies whose loveliness, undiminished by the wear of centuries, still rivaled the glory of Solomon.

As he ascended the steps and removed his hat, the pastor rose and placed a chair for him near his own.

“Good evening, Gordon.  Where did you immure yourself all day?  I expected to find you taking part in the children’s festival, and hunted for you in the crowd.”

“I expected to attend, but this morning something occurred which unfitted me for enjoyment of any kind; consequently I thought it best to keep myself and my moodiness out of sight.”

“I trust nothing serious has happened?”

“Yes, something that threatens to blast all my hopes, and make my life one great disappointment.  Has not Edna told you?”

“She has told me nothing relative to yourself, but I noticed that she was depressed and grieved about something.  She was abstracted and restless, and went home very early, pleading fatigue and headache.”