father, the Deacon,—­being urged thereto by the failing health of his overtasked wife,—­adopted as half daughter, half serving maid, a beautiful and friendless girl, who might otherwise have gone to ruin.  Her name was plain Hannah Lee.  No name can be imagined too liquid, sweet and voluptuous in its sound to typify her loveliness.  It was not strange, therefore, that she had not been long in the house before Jason Fletcher, hitherto deprived of much cheerful female society, felt stealing over him a new and strange excitement of mingled joy and wonder.  It is trite and tame to say that for him there came new flowers in all the fields and by all the road-sides, and a hitherto unknown fragrance in the balmy air; rosier colors to the sunset, softer tints to the yellow gray east at dawn, brighter sparkle to the brooks, breezier glories to the mountain-tops; but, doubtless, this was strictly true, as it has been many times before and since to many other men, but scarce ever accompanied by so great and complete a change.

His father might have expected it, and his mother have reckoned upon it, but no thought of love in connection with their quiet and awkward son ever entered into their minds, and so they put this sweet creature into the youth’s way, not reflecting that only one result—­on his side, at least—­could follow.

They kept no watch upon the pair, and knew not of the many meetings, accidental, apparently, even to themselves, that took place between the innocent youth and girl.  It needs no reading of light books to make a successful lover, nor grace, nor elegant carriage; and Nature points the way to the most modest and untrained wooer.  So, without a word having been spoken on the subject, nor any caress exchanged, except, perhaps, an occasional momentarily clasped hand, or the necessary and proper contact, when Hannah rode, sometimes, behind Jason on the pillion (one arm around him to keep her in her seat), they became lovers, and none the less so that they had given no verbal or labial utterance to their loves.

And the summer flew by on wings of the fleetest, and Jason’s twenty-first birth-day approached.

It fell this year upon a Sunday.  The family had ‘been to meeting’ all the day as usual, no reference being made to the fact that the youth was now ‘free.’ (His father had said to him, as they milked the cows on Saturday night, ‘We will put by your “Freedom Day” till Monday.’) But all day Jason had walked, and thought, and eaten, and drunk, not to the glory of the Lord, as his father and mother piously believed they did, but to the glory of himself—­no longer a child, but a man!

It lacked a full half hour to sunset, and there was no cooler resting place that warm summer afternoon than beneath the shade of a thick-leaved grape-vine that overspread a stunted pear tree some little distance in the rear of the house.  Hannah, with her natural love for pleasant things and places, had induced Jason, some time before, to make a seat for her in this charming spot.  It was quite out of sight from the house, and the little bower the vine made could be entered only from one side.  In this bower Hannah sat this sunny afternoon, wondering if it would change Jason very much to be a boy no longer, and devoutly praying in the depths of her pure little heart that it would not.