very delightful spot once, was delightful still, none the less so
for the air of gentle melancholy which seemed to pervade it, the
melancholy which invests all places that have once been the
scenes of joy and pleasure and young life, and are so no longer,
places where hearts have throbbed, and pulses thrilled, and eyes
brightened, and merry voices echoed. The ghosts of these things
seem to linger in their old haunts through many empty years.

The orchard was large and long, enclosed in a tumbledown old
fence of longers bleached to a silvery gray in the suns of many
lost summers. At regular intervals along the fence were tall,
gnarled fir trees, and an evening wind, sweeter than that which
blew over the beds of spice from Lebanon, was singing in their
tops, an earth-old song with power to carry the soul back to the
dawn of time.

Eastward, a thick fir wood grew, beginning with tiny treelets
just feathering from the grass, and grading up therefrom to the
tall veterans of the mid-grove, unbrokenly and evenly, giving the
effect of a solid, sloping green wall, so beautifully compact
that it looked as if it had been clipped into its velvet surface
by art.

Most of the orchard was grown over lushly with grass; but at the
end where Eric stood there was a square, treeless place which had
evidently once served as a homestead garden. Old paths were
still visible, bordered by stones and large pebbles. There were
two clumps of lilac trees; one blossoming in royal purple, the
other in white. Between them was a bed ablow with the starry
spikes of June lilies. Their penetrating, haunting fragrance