the music from here."

They listened, and the breeze brought across the fields the sound of
fiddles and the rhythmic tramp of feet, softened by the distance. Dorothy's
young pulses leaped.

"Mother, is it any harm for them just to see it? They have so little fun,
except what they get out of teasing and shirking."

"My dear, thy father would never countenance such a scene of frivolity, or
permit one of his children to look upon it; through our eyes and ears the
world takes possession of our hearts."

"Then I'm to spare the boys this temptation, mother? Thee will trust _me_
to pass the barn?"

"I would trust my boys, if they were thy age, Dorothy; but their resolution
is tender like their years."

It might be questioned whether the frame of mind in which the boys went to
bed that night under their mother's eye, for Rachel could be firm in a case
of conscience, was more improving than the frivolity of Slocum's barn.

"Mother," called Dorothy, looking in at the kitchen window where Rachel was
stooping over the embers in the fireplace to light a bedroom candle, "I
want to speak to thee."

Rachel came to the window, screening the candle with her hand.

"Will thee trust me to look at the dancing a little while? It is so very