far away from childish tasks and childish troubles, to the barn
chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy reveries, and
vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the
sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in
her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of
anticipation.

Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the
heavy doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever
new Paradise! Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For
Rebecca had that something in her soul that

"Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise."

At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's
barn with its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that
swam with the wind and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The
meadow, with its sunny slopes stretching up to the pine woods,
was sometimes a flowing sheet of shimmering grass,
sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were blooming--a vision of
white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would be dotted with
"the happy hills of hay," and a little later the rock maple on
the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against
the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,
brave in scarlet.

It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air
that Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite "Mr. Aladdin"), after
searching for her in field and garden, suddenly noticed the open
doors of the barn chamber, and called to her. At the sound of his