would glance back over his shoulder at the nut-brown maid, whose closely
clinging, scant drapery gave her a sculpturesque grace to which her
unconsciousness of it was a charm the more.

These flashes of subtile recognition between youth and youth--these
sudden mute greetings and farewells--reached almost the dimension of
incidents in that first day's eventless ride. Once Lynde halted at the
porch of a hip-roofed, unpainted house with green paper shades at the
windows, and asked for a cup of milk, which was brought him by the nut-
brown maid, who never took her flattering innocent eyes off the young
man's face while he drank--sipping him as he sipped the milk; and young
Lynde rode away feeling as if something had really happened.

More than once that morning he drew up by the roadside to listen to some
lyrical robin on an apple-bough, or to make friends with the black-
belted Durham cows and the cream-colored Alderneys, who came solemnly to
the pasture wall and stared at him with big, good-natured faces. A row
of them, with their lazy eyes and pink tongues and moist india-rubber
noses, was as good as a play.

At noon that day our adventureless adventurer had reached Bayley's Four-
Corners, where he found provender for himself and Mary at what had
formerly been a tavern, in the naive stage-coach epoch. It was the sole
house in the neighborhood, and was occupied by the ex-landlord, one
Tobias Sewell, who had turned farmer. On finishing his cigar after
dinner, Lynde put the saddle on Mary, and started forward again. It is
hardly correct to say forward, for Mary took it into her head to back
out of Bayley's Four-Corners, a feat which she performed to the
unspeakable amusement of Mr. Sewell and a quaint old gentleman, named
Jaffrey, who boarded in the house.