despatch a reckless note: "Will you come to the arbor for a little
while tonight? I have never dared ask this before, but you know how I
have desired it. It is so much more private there. Write on the back
of this paper one word, 'Yes.' There is a pencil in the nest."

The shutters were nearly closed, but I caught sight of the curve of a
shoulder and the movement of a busy hand. As I pushed the note up I
said:

"Read it at once. I am waiting."

A hand came out and took in the note, then the pencil; then note and
pencil were put back. On the former was written, "Yes."

I think I must have done a dozen things in five minutes, and then I
started aimlessly off to town. On the way I met Georgiana.

"Good God, Georgiana!" I exclaimed. "You _here_!"

"Where else?" said she. "And why not?"

"I thought I just saw you at the window--" And then my awful soul
within me said: "H-sh-sh-sh! Not a word of this to a human being!"

After supper last night I called old Jack and Dilsy into the garden,
and led them around it, giving orders; thence to the arbor, where I
bade them sit down.

In the year of 1805 Mr. Jefferson, as president of the Philosophical
Society, ordered excavations to be made at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky