driving out with any one, you know."

"Very well, the road is free, at any rate. I'll hitch my horse
down here in the woods somewhere and when you start to walk I
shall follow and catch up with you. There's luckily only one way
to reach the church from here, and your father can't blame us if
we both take it!"

And so it fell out that Ivory and Waitstill walked together in
the cool of the afternoon to the meeting-house on Tory Hill.
Waitstill kept the beaten path on one side and Ivory that on the
other, so that the width of the country road, deep in dust, was
between them, yet their nearness seemed so tangible a thing that
each could feel the heart beating in the other's side.
Their talk was only that of tried friends, a talk interrupted by
long beautiful silences; silences that come only to a man and
woman whose understanding of each other is beyond question and
answer. Not a sound broke the stillness, yet the very air, it
seemed to them, was shedding meanings: the flowers were exhaling
a love secret with their fragrances, the birds were singing it
boldly from the tree-tops, yet no word passed the man's lips or
the girl's. Patty would have hung out all sorts of signals and
lures to draw the truth from Ivory and break through the walls of
his self-control, but Waitstill, never; and Ivory Boynton was
made of stuff so strong that he would not speak a syllable of
love to a woman unless he could say all. He was only
five-and-twenty, but he had been reared in a rigorous school, and
had learned in its poverty, loneliness, and anxiety lessons of
self-denial and self-control that bore daily fruit now. He knew
that Deacon Baxter would never allow any engagement to exist