Morning came--or rather the long night came to an end at last--and at
twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the Sloman cottage. It
was so late in September that the morning was a little hazy and
uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft--a perfect reflex, I
thought, of Bessie last night--an electric softness under a brooding
cloud.

The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell:
no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely
not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would
wait in the porch--she would certainly come down soon.

So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
an hour passed.

"I will give her a gentle reminder;" so I gathered a spray from the
honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling leaves, and aimed it
right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted and it fell into the
room, but instead of the answering face that I looked to see, all was
still again.

"It's very strange," thought I. "Bessie's pique is not apt to last so
long. She must indeed be angry."

And I went over each detail of our last night's talk, from her first
burst of "Take me with you!" to my boggling answers, my fears, so
stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a picturesque
bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid traveling and
much musty, old research.