Litchfield enquirer., 1875-07-29

crushed, and quite forced out of sight, in
 the loving stress of the embraces that fol lowed.
 ''You dear old thing p cried Marnie. 'I never loved you before as do now. And
 do you think would have stayed there for anything, when knew my mother
 had been waiting here whole quarter to see me?''
 And then, as she thought of Mir. Hali-
 burton again, Mamie felt that she was half angry with him. for having been the cause of even this suspicion that she might prove unfaithful to her mother. When she returned to Flint Hill, she learned that Mir. Halliburton had driven over from Blueberry. before his lecture, with ticket for her use. Not finding her there, he had left it at the disposal of the Fayrewethers. But the farmers wife has, tened to point it out. with sort of vim dlctive oficiousness, as it lay primly on Marnie's little bedroom table. The school l mistress took up the slip of cardboard mechanically, and looked at it. But the bare black words. ''Admit One," seemed to emphasize the insidious weariness which had been creeping into her life since the autumn, that she was insensiblY cast down by it. She paced absently GAOOub AOA 4OOu, duus u6E Ol an old piano belonging to neighbor at home, on which she had once been used to play. wished it were now at hand, that she might dispel, with some simple har- mony, the momentary jarring trouble that beset her heart.
 At length the dull stretch of latter win fcr loft hoh1-l T, SHOWS gradually disappeared, ,and the road semi-solid river of mud. By the middle of May, however, the ice of Flint Pond had snapped asunder its heavy plates; and the rivulet burrowed beneath the road again, and flashed out on the south, with a more than ever exquisite tinkling ca dence h its rppling. Something in the return of spring may have stirred the memory in Timothy. for one day he asked Marnie whether she had kept the forget get-me-nots she had taken with her the summer before, from the brook-side un- der the elm.
 "Yes, indeed, she answered. "I kept them and pressed them when got home"
 ''But how dld you keep them fresh, on the way?"
 And so Marnie had to tell him the little incident of her meeting with MT. Groo- seek, and his attention. Timothy appear ed strangely moved; but he did not speak with her further, then. He went of to hls own room. Something oppressed him; he became suddenly conscious of weight In his bosom, and it seemed as this must have been there for long time without his observing it,-almost ever since that day when Marnie had ridden beside him, with the flowers in her hand. It was an unusual thing for him to enter his own room during the day; for changes of dress and ablutiOns were seldom. thought of, after the morning. But now he actual Iy sat down for a moment, in its chamber ed silence, allowing his eyes to become vacant, and his ears to lose their aIertness. The vacant eyes. however, soon contracted and sharpened their gaze again, and he became conscious of his Bible lying oh a painted shelf opposite to him. He rose with long step towards it, and, taking M1ed C1fS -DU0K on nIs KIIeess nc nau uG- termined that the present crisis was one which demanded that hap-hazzard resort to Scripture of which he knew people of ten made use in their troubles. The pas. sage upon which he chanced was this:
 ''But we glory in tribularons also, knowing that tribulation worketh pa tience"
 He did not read on, because he had of ten heard the remainder of the verse. and was content with these opening words, the bearing of which upon his own life had never been very direct or powerful before. Closing the book. he arose and went out of the house. Everything seemed strange to hlm.-the old, roomY barn, the we'll known fields. During these moments in his roon.- he had almost forgotten that it was spring, and that there was sowing to be done. He could not help wondering whether this load would ever leave his heart: whether the scene around him would ever resume its wonted aspect of perfect familiarity. No, he was nearly sure that there would always be something slightly different about it, hereafter. Then he found himself repeating the passage from the Bible, and supplying clause or two from memory; 'that trbulation work eth patience, and patience experience, and experience hope" Then again he stopped; he could remember the ending of the sen- tence. But that word ''hope" seemed fine; it restored his failing sense of spring.
 Meanwhile, his question had reminded 6uC Haul HUI OuCC 1OOACu dO the pressed forget-me-nots, since her re- turn. She went to her room and searched for the book of poems in which she re- membered laying them. She had studied so closely, all winter, that she had not once sought out the volume, since her re- turn to Flint Hill. And now she could find it nowhere. A momentary suspicion crossed her mind, excited by Timothy's question concerning the flowers. But she dismissed it almost immediately; and 1t was only a week later that letter came from her mother, in which she mentioned having found the missing book, where Marnie had inadvertently left it on her de- parture in the autumn. T think there were some flowers pressed in 1t. she went on to say. in her letter; "but if there were, they dropped out and were lost. Now I come to think of it, though, there may not have been any: for I remember Mir. Halliburton was making call, whenH first picked up the book, and he couldn't find anything on the floor, although I had thought saw something fall. And he has sharper eyes than mine" This news may not have made the disappearance of the flowers any clearer in Marnie's mind. At all events, she neither communicated 1t, nor the fact of her loss, to the farmers son.
 Presently greenness began in the wet and odorous woods, traffic was resumed upon the highway, now no longer covered with snow; and the old facination of ex- pectancy returned upon Mamie, as she studied its narrowing sweep to the north west,-although strange, drowsy, and half-sad contentment came over her like wise.
 One day, when she had turned the dron- ing little populace of the benches out into the road for their recess, she watched Pete Fayrewether, with boy friend, draw ing two of the schoolgirls uphill in 8 tiny cart, to bower of fresh shrubs and sap- iDgs which they had that morning erect ed. There the two young maiden divini- ties were enshrined, and remained sitting ln an embarrassment of idleness, while the boys ran to and from the bower, and all four chattered in and about their nest like quartette of happy birds. Marnie could not help wondering what. might come of the little incident hereafter, whether the modest bower would bloom