from the trail. A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton
leaves and pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's
hoard, but for some reason had been deserted.

"Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on
tip-toe to peep into its recesses. Don Caesar looked at her
admiringly; it seemed like a return to their first idyllic love-
making in the old days, when she used to steal out of the cabbage
rows in her brown linen apron and sun-bonnet to walk with him in
the woods. He recalled the fact to her with the fatality of a
lover already seeking to restore in past recollections something
that was wanting in the present. She received it with the
impatience of youth, to whom the present is all sufficient.

"I wonder how you could ever have cared for me in that holland
apron," she said, looking down upon her new dress.

"Shall I tell you why?" he said, fondly, passing his arm around her
waist, and drawing her pretty head nearer his shoulder.

"No--not now!" she said, laughingly, but struggling to free
herself. "There's not time. Write it, and put it in the box.
There," she added, hastily, "listen!--what's that?"

"It's only a squirrel," he whispered reassuringly in her ear.

"No; it's somebody coming! I must go! Please! Caesar, dear!
There, then--"

She met his kiss half-way, released herself with a lithe movement