The Doctor's eyes, as they rested on her eager face, had a kindly
expression in them, and a look of amusement lurked there also.

"No; she never married," he said. "Nor did he."

"Oh, I am glad of that," she exclaimed; and then more softly added, "I
know he did not."

Dr. Balsam gazed at her calmly. He did not pursue the subject further.
He thought he had told his story in such a way as to convey the moral
without disclosing that he spoke of himself. Yet she had discovered it
instantly. He wondered if she had seen also the moral he intended
to convey.

Alice Yorke was able to walk now, and many an afternoon Gordon Keith
invited her to stroll with him on the mountain-side or up the Ridge,
drawing her farther and farther as her strength returned.

The Spring is a dangerous season for a young man and a pretty girl to be
thrown closely together for the first time, and the budding woods are a
perilous pasture for their browsing thoughts. It was not without some
insight that the ancient poets pictured dryads as inhabitants of the
woods, and made the tinkling springs and rippling streams the
abiding-places of their nymphs.

The Spring came with a burst of pink and green. The mountains took on
delicate shades, and the trees blossomed into vast flowers, feathery and
fine as lace.

An excursion in the budding woods has been dangerous ever since the day