playing and dreaming perhaps as he also dreamed, he realized that she was
growing up. A new beauty had come into her face and slender form, her
great dark eyes seemed to hold deeper interests, she was no longer in the
world of childhood. The mystery enveloping her origin, which for some
reason Mrs. Frost had never chosen to dispel, gave a certain piquancy to
the interest and affection Tom felt for her. In the imaginative tales he
had been fond of weaving for his own amusement, Nancy would frequently
figure, revealed at last as the child of noble parents, as a princess
doomed by some strange fate to exile. He thought of these things as from
time to time he glanced back at her, holding aside some branch that
crossed the path or giving her his hand to help her over a boulder in the
way. The red scarf about her neck, red cap on her dark hair, flashing in
and out of the tangled pathway against the background of the snow-clad
woods, gave a bright note of colour to the scene.

They were obliged for the most part to walk in single file until the last
ridge descended over a mass of rocks to the marshes along Beaver Pond.
Then having given her his hand to help her down, he kept hold of it as
they went along the free path to the open meadows. The feeling of Nancy's
cool little hand in his gave Tom an odd and conscious sense of pleasure.

"You have been uncommonly silent, Nance, even for you," he said at last.

"Oh, I'm always silent, Tom," she replied. "It is because I am stupid and
have nothing to say."

"Nonsense, my dear, you always have a lot to say to me. But you are
forever reading, thinking ... what's it all about?"

"Oh, I think, Tom, because I have little else to do; but my thoughts