and he in wonder went.

The streets were brightly lighted, and the moon was up. The ice cracked
crisp under their feet. Sleighs, with two riders in each, shot merrily
by. People were laughing in groups before the shop-windows. In the glare
of a jeweller's counter somebody was buying a wedding-ring, and a girl
with red cheeks was looking hard the other way.

"Let's get away," said Asenath,--"get away from here!"

They chose by tacit consent that favorite road of hers over the eastern
bridge. Their steps had a hollow, lonely ring on the frosted wood; she
was glad when the softness of the snow in the road received them. She
looked back once at the water, wrinkled into thin ice on the edge for a
foot or two, then open and black and still.

"What are you doing?" asked Dick. She said that she was wondering how
cold it was, and Dick laughed at her.

They strolled on in silence for perhaps a mile of the desolate road.

"Well, this is social!" said Dick at length; "how much farther do you
want to go? I believe you'd walk to Reading if nobody stopped you!"

She was taking slow, regular steps like an automaton, and looking
straight before her.

"How much farther? Oh!" She stopped and looked about her.

A wide young forest spread away at their feet, to the right and to the