* * * * *

The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumn
was at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earth
smells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightness
and strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the free
branching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belonged
to the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse and
drive away the weeping and melancholy autumn.

Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone even
amid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back their
fire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the
weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent;
and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed,
with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with
her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--stern
with himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one was
under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and
wooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded to
her lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought.
Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that
Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of
passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a golden
air--when once they had passed into the freedom and confidence of
marriage?

Meanwhile the difficulties were all plain to him--more plain, indeed,
than ever. He could not flatter himself that she looked any more kindly
on his faith or his friends. And his friends--or some of them--were, to