_More Home Scenes._

"Tell me the story often.
For I forgot so soon;
The early dew of morning
Has passed away at noon."


When Bessie Ford parted from Lucy at the gate, she had still a long
walk before reaching home. Mill Bank Farm was a good mile and a half
from the village if you went by the road, but Bessie shortened it very
considerably by striking across the fields a little way beyond the
village. There were one or two fences to climb, but Bessie did not
mind that any more than she minded the placid cows browsing in the
pasture through which her way led. The breezy meadows, white with
ox-eye daisies, and in some places yellow with buttercups, with the
blue river flowing rapidly past on one side, afforded a pleasant walk
at any time, and the rest of the way was still prettier. Just within
the boundary of Mill Bank Farm the ground ascended slightly, and then
descended into a narrow glen or ravine, with steep, rocky sides
luxuriantly draped with velvet moss and waving ferns, while along the
bottom of it a little stream flowed quietly enough towards the river,
though a little higher up it came foaming and dashing down the rocks
and turned a small saw-mill on the farm. The sides of the ravine were
shady with hemlocks, spreading their long, waving boughs over the
rocks, with whose dark, solemn foliage maples and birches contrasted
their fresh vivid green. In spring, what a place it was for wild
flowers!--as Lucy Raymond and her brothers well knew, having often
brought home thence great bunches of dielytras and convallarias and