stood Prue, looking as good and sweet as ever.

"Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!" Mollie exclaimed, sitting up and
holding out her hands. "I thought it was all a dream, and that you
were not coming. You will take me with you again, won't you? I did
love yesterday."

Prudence smiled and took Mollie's hands in her own. "We need not
waste time talking to-day," she said. "Listen to the music."

Mollie shut her eyes and listened to Aunt Mary, who just then began
to sing--Mollie could hear the words quite plainly:

"Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain hath bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me."

They were standing on a rough deeply rutted cart-track high up on a
hill-side. Behind them the hill rose steeply, so thickly wooded that
Mollie could not see plainly to the top. Before her it fell in a
gentle slope to a narrow valley, through which ran a shallow creek
with green banks on either side. Straight before her, half-way up
the opposite hill, she saw a white cottage covered with a scarlet
flowering creeper. It had casement windows all wide open, and a
trellised porch. The garden of the cottage reached to the foot of
the hill, and for three-quarters of its length was filled with rows
of vines, looking like green lines ruled on a brown slate.

On one side of the little vineyard Mollie could see a path winding