and of greenness, yellowness, and redness was continued. It rained, as usual, in Sneek the next day, but no rain and no water could damp Sneek. It was the most active town any of us had ever seen. It must have been the original "hive of industry." It was full, and full of everything. The market was full of cattle, pigs, and sheep, crowded in pens and in carts; calves, prone, with all four legs tied together, filled acres of pavement. The cafés were full of dealers and drovers, mostly rather jolly, being served by slatternly, pleasant women. The streets were full of good shops, and of boys and girls following us and touching us to see if we existed. (Dreadful little boors!) The barges were full of cauliflowers, cabbages, apples, potatoes, sabots, cheeses, and barrels. The canals were full of barges and steamers.

And immediately one sat down to sketch a group of craft one learned that nothing was stationary. Everything moved that floated-everything on the surface of miles of canal! Everybody, without haste, but without stopping ever, was tirelessly engaged in shifting matter from one spot to another. At intervals a small steamer, twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty tons, would set off for a neighboring village with a few passengers,- including nice girls, a few cattle, and high piles of miscellaneous packages; or would come in

from a neighboring village. The kaleidoscope was everlasting; but it did not fatigue, because it never hurried. Only it made us ashamed of our idleness. Gently occupied old country-women, with headdresses of lace-work and a gold casque, the whole ridiculously surmounted by a black bonnet for fashion's sake-even these old women made us ashamed of our untransporting idleness.

Having got our engine more or less repaired, we departed from Sneek, a spot that beyond most spots abounds in its own individuality. Sneek is memorable. Impossible to credit that it has fewer than thirteen thousand inhabitants!

As, at breakfast, we dropped down the canal on the way to Leeuwarden, a new guest on board, whose foible is the search for the ideal, and who had been declaiming against the unattractiveness of the women of Munich, spoke thus:

"Is this Dutch bread? I think I should like to become a Dutchman, and live at Sneek, and marry a Dutch girl. They have such nice blue eyes, and they 're so calm."

I remarked that I should have thought that his recent experiences in Munich would have frightened him right off the entire sex. He said:

"Well, they 're all beautiful in Vienna, and that worries you just as much in another way. Sneek is the mean."

UT in the sunny dooryard Uncle Benjy sit sawing wood. His white fringe of beard glistened in the sunshine, and his cap and his old pea-jacket took on a brownish green tinge, like the seaweed down on the shore when the tide was out. Uncle Benjy's clothes were all old friends, to be clung to as long as the rusty seams would hold in place; for they had weathered the sun and the brine so long together that they were like parts of himself. Now his fishing days were over, but he could still do anything "in reason," anything but

hurry. He sawed a few logs, and threw them over to the pile to dry out in the sun. They fell with a little clatter, and the smell of the freshly cut wood filled the air pungently for a moment, till it mingled with all the other odors that made the very air, this glorious May morning, like some wonderful aroma sent down from the skies. Stopping to sniff it delightedly, Uncle Benjy hurried less than ever.

The air was sweet with the salt of the sea, visible, a mile away, like the rim of a blue crystal cup; with the scent of apple

blossoms from the gnarly old trees over the lichened wall; with the smell of growing grass and freshly turned earth; and with the delicate breath of the lilies of the valley there in the shade of the door-step. Even D'rindy's linen sunning on the bush lent its homely fragrance, and, from indoors, the smell of baking bread. Better than the others, Uncle Benjy loved these last, for they took his thoughts to D'rindy. Sweeter to his ears than the joyous song of the "golden robin" on the branch of the budding elm, or the chatter of the swallows from the eaves of the gray old barn, or even than the song of the incoming tide, was the sound of D'rindy's voice singing within. Best of all was the sight of her as she stepped out from the door

way.

Sunny-haired and sunny-visaged was D'rindy, with eyes as blue as the sea this morning, and cheeks that would not lose their blossom pink till those old orchard trees had lost theirs how many, many times! Not tall and "fine-looking" like the older sisters she had left at home to come and keep house for Uncle Benjy now that he was alone, but far more pleasing, with her softly rounded figure, "not too big, an' not too little," Uncle Benjy put it; "jest growed nice." Nor was D'rindy ambitious, like those other sisters. They were all Porters, but D'rindy, stray sheep, was a Nudd. D'rindy was a dreamer. D'rindy liked stories better than facts, and she liked folks better than books. D'rindy liked to do things better than to learn. Her schooling had always been irregular, she had been so useful at home. The male Nudds were all shiftless; they would leave their own crops any day to hear or tell a story, or to help a neighbor with his; but the women were home-makers. And if now, in this sleepy old neighborhood by the sea, away from all their rigorous clubs and "courses," D'rindy was growing altogether wild, then wild things are sometimes sweetest, like those roses. from forgotten old gardens blooming still in a sweet tangle over in the Old Road, where D'rindy loved to find them. Uncle Benjy would not have traded one of her sudden dimples, one of her soft curves, one of her happy little fancies, for all her sisters' fine looks and fine minds. Uncle Benjy was himself a Nudd. As for D'rindy, D'rindy was not homesick.

A

vision of pure happiness she stood there in the doorway this morning. Small wonder that Uncle Benjy, lover of sunshine, basked in the light of her presence.

A long apprenticeship of patience Uncle Benjy had served with Sarah, his wife, noisy, sharp-tongued, with a temper leaping into quick flame at the slightest draft, and with vinegar for blood, such a faculty she had for turning life's sweetness bitter and sour. Cleanliness, her sole earthly god, she worshiped with unflagging zeal, till her house was as clean, as bare of comfort, as comfort, as a wind-swept, tide-washed rock in the sea. Hiding his hurt, Uncle Benjy, kindly and humorous, had put up with the tirades of which he knew she was afterward half ashamed, but of which she could never cure herself. Only on the worst days he "stood from under." "Mother ain't quite well to-day," he would shield her sometimes when she could be heard storming away inside. As an indication of his tenderness, her strongest hold upon him was as the mother of the children she had never borne him.

After twenty-five years of forbearance, he had come out of it with a heart as sweet and sound as one of his own pippins in March. Then had come her stroke. For six months she lay helpless, speechless. Uncle Benjy tended her like a baby. "She wa'n't ever quite well, I guess," he said when it was all over. After a while D'rindy came, and home was the haven it might have been all the years gone by. Oh, the ease and comfort and happiness those two crowded into the days! Culprits together of old, they fairly ran wild now, truants from all responsibility, vagabonds from care.

"D'rindy," he called down gleefully one night after a happy day of following out their notions-"D'rindy, you 've never made my bed!" Another time, a little puzzled, he asked, "When 'd I change my shirt?"

Nowadays D'rindy dared to hunt out the ancient things from the hidden corners of attic and store-room, and bring them forth to light. Uncle Benjy's eyes would twinkle over at her approvingly at every discovery.

"D'rindy, you 're old-fashioned," he would taunt her.

Not one of those quaint old pieces but was as full of ripe memories for him as a

sound nut of meat.

The old order had been, early to bed and early to rise. Now, on an evening all of stories, the warm, tranquil hours would tick themselves away, and the round face of the old clock look down as placidly as if it were not used to looking down on a covered fire and a dark room. Returning the look with one as placid, Uncle Benjy would settle back in his chair a little more comfortably. "Ain't we settin' up pretty late, D'rindy?" he would say luxuriantly. But time was taking swifter flight the other way for D'rindy, back to the old days and the old people of the stories.

""T ain't nice to let 'em all die an' never think of 'em," she would say softly. That was why she loved the Old Road, which once had been the only road. If the sea was always in the background of Uncle Benjy's mind, it was the Old Road that was always there in D'rindy's thoughts.

Down the Old Road it was that the first settlers came to the sea. Down the Old Road the two Indians came that Sunday morning, frightening grammarm so she hid her two little children under a big brass kettle before she answered their knock. Uncle Benjy was one of those children. The old kettle was still out in the back kitchen, and by the fire the straight little chair that grammarm used to sit in. When she told D'rindy the story she was a withered-up, quaint little creature, with her short dress, her short white hair under her cap, her gold beads, and the thin little gold loops in her ears. But once she was young and full of life. So were all those other old people of Uncle Benjy's tales. Over on the Old Road they still were young for D'rindy. They peopled her vision, and came back to live again in their gabled old houses. If, wherever she turned in this sleepy old neighborhood, the past was still there to read in visible dreams, then the heart of those old days was still beating quick and warm in the Old Road.

But of all the changes D'rindy wrought in the old kitchen, the best of all for Uncle Benjy was when she brought down his old sea-chest, and spread its treasures about on wall and shelf as things to be loved and lived with.

"Sho! sho!" he exclaimed, well pleased. "Where'd ye come on that?" he said, his

eye lighting on the carving of a ship in a bottle up on the mantelpiece. "Made it second trip out," he said. Then a little shade crossed his face. "Mother did n't like 'em," he said, "so I stowed all sech as that up attic.

'She did n't like the sea," he went on. "She did n't like to be on it or by it or of it. Guess she thought I mought have amounted to more if I'd stuck to the land. Mebbe. Guess, though, I wa'n't doomed to be overrich either way. No tellin' what she had to put up with in me. What she'd ha' liked would been a man that moved 'bout as spry for a man as she did for a woman. Her heart was set on a big, drivin' farm, an' this little place, with its little bit o' orchard, an' its two-three rocky fields, was what she had to make out with. An' means-she wanted means, Not to spend or to see 'em spent, but to feel 't they was there, 'cumulatin', growin' more. An' the sea jest 'bout kep' us goin'. She did n't like the sea."

Sometimes

But D'rindy liked the sea. all evening long the snug little kitchen was the dark mess-room of a whaler, its blackened ceiling grimy with smoke and grease from the guttering lamps on the wall. The winds blew-the winds of long ago; the storm beat against the hatches, and the waves broke in swirling white sheets on the deck, while Uncle Benjy, D'rindy with him, sailed over again the voyages of his youth. D'rindy came to know every one of those groups of seamen by face and by name. There were little 'Bijah Bachelder, who killed himself for homesickness; big, blue-eyed Abe Saunders, who did n't like to take the life of even a whale; Rufe Dow, who did n't mind the sea so much, but could n't stand the gibberish of the foreign ports. All the way out and in D'rindy was there with them, sharing their dangers, their privations, the hard monotony of the days.

Sometimes as they tossed, miles out, on the black, storm-driven sea, there would come a loud knock on the door, startling D'rindy as though real calamity had overtaken them at last. Smiling to see her jump, Uncle Benjy would rise to open the door.

"Guess we 'll have to put back to shore for Lyman," he would say.

Even when Lyman Heath and D'rindy were children together, they were Uncle

Benjy's two most trusted companions. In those days Uncle Benjy's happiest hours were those summer mornings when he took them out in his boat; the best times now were these winter evenings when he took them out over that wilder, rougher- sea that raged beside the fire. As they settled. down, his look held all three together in its rich content, just as in the old days in the boat, when the wind filled the sails and the shore began to recede, and he would lean back to the tiller with a happy, "Now we 're off!"

But though for Uncle Benjy they were always children again when he had them together, that was the very time of all when they felt least like it. Alone, they could put themselves back into those sunny days as easily as if the farthest off were only yesterday, but together it was a time. they could never quite recapture, not even with Uncle Benjy there just the same. And yet, as D'rindy lifted her eyes for another look, there was something of the boy she used to play with still there.

Only a year older than herself and just turned twenty, in the three years since she had seen him he seemed to have leaped into manhood. Smooth-faced still, his hair was as light as ever, but the forehead from which it waved back seemed broader, and the chin beneath it squarer. His mouth always had been diffident like that, and his gray eyes shy. Rather small and deep-set, they seemed shyer than ever now, dumbly inarticulate, like those of a great faithful dog, following her about, though with a steadiness that begot a shyness in her, and all the time awoke little echoes in her heart. Even as a little girl, she remembered, his eyes had begged something of her. But for all his shyness there was manliness to read in every inch of him. His shoulders were so broad and square that every now and then Uncle Benjy would say, "I declare, you 're still growin'!"

And he had grown so wise in those three years at the agricultural college! So wise that now he was converting the old, used-up hilltop farm that had come to him from his Grandfather Dole into a model farm. He forgot to be shy when he was telling of his farming projects, of rotation. of crops, of silo, of scientific treatment of soil, of planting of trees, and of plowing the soil under them, and of the old stream

Dear

that used to go to waste in the pasture, but that now he made use of for water-power to turn the cider-press and churn. to his heart was his growing herd of Holsteins and his flock of white Brahmas; but it was the apples that were to be his great crop. Apple-trees by the hundred he was setting out on the sheltered slopes of the hills.

"Hear him! hear him!" Uncle Benjy would chuckle over to D'rindy. "AppleSeed John's in great form to-night." But Uncle Benjy reveled in his enthusiasm and in the undoubted success with which all things were working out, and it was all better even than a story to D'rindy.

Once when he was drawing the plan for one of the model chicken houses he was working on, she suggested some little change of detail. It was just what was needed to perfect it. He marveled at her insight. Another time she offered an idea so manifestly absurd that he threw back his head and laughed. But her delicious absurdity drew them even nearer together than her unexpected wisdom, and always there was the bond of her interest. Best of all she liked to hear how he was getting on with Grandfather Dole's old house; for the barns he was tearing down, and replacing with new ones, while the little old dwelling-house, shabby on the surface, but sound at heart, he was restoring to life again. Soon it would shine like new.

But even when they were speaking of it, if Uncle Benjy left them alone for a moment, a little constraint would fall upon them, a silence that neither seemed quite able to break. Then Uncle Benjy would come back with the armful of wood he had insisted on going for, or his pick of the apples from the loaded bins down cellar, and all would go on as before, with only the memory of that little silence back there in their consciousness. Again, every night, would come that longer pause, when Uncle Benjy, lighting the old ship's lantern, would go out to make sure that every creature in barn and stable was warm and snug, that the wind had n't loosened the buttons on the doors, and that all was shipshape. It was a little rite that he performed alone, taking it as a reflection on his age if any one offered to accompany him. Were they watching him in fancy as he looked in on the sleeping cow and horse that they sat there

hardly lifting their eyes to each other? And listening-listening so hard to what? Then at last would come the sound of his returning footsteps, and again the roar of the sea as the door was opened, and he would stand there, knocking the snow off his shoes, and calling out to them in his cheery voice.

Somehow, of all the evening it was those quiet little intervals that Lyman would remember and carry all the way home with him in his mind. And up-stairs in her bed D'rindy would fall asleep to dream of a world that was all one great orchard. Now the apples were red on the trees, and now they lay sunning in great mounds underneath. The smell of cider was in the air. And beyond the orchard were bowls and bowls of yellow cream, and baskets of creamy white eggs, one beyond another, close together at first, then far apart, like white pebbles in a fairy-story, dropped to show the way. And when D'rindy followed on from one to another, they led at last to a little old house that shone like new.

D'rindy's ways were happy ways, and D'rindy's thoughts were happy thoughts, but sometimes, as spring drew near, all without any reason, they were happier than ever. At other times a vague little sadness overcame her, a restlessness, a dissatisfaction with herself, a half-felt longing for something, she knew not what; a pain, as though all life were disillusion. She would sit very quiet, forgetting to speak for so long that Uncle Benjy would look over to her wistfully.

"D'rindy," he would say, "you 're lonesome. You go back to your folks for a spell. I'll make out."

"Oh, no," she would exclaim, turning a little white at the very idea. But, then, why should she want to leave Uncle Benjy?

"Well, then," he would go on anxiously, "you take up that course o' plantstudy they was writin' 'bout." The spell would be over; D'rindy's face would break into dimpling smiles.

Only yesterday that new sadness had been there. All day long D'rindy had struggled against it, only to go to bed weary at last. But this morning, as she stood there in the doorway, a marvelous gladness was on her face.

as

It was though a miracle had happened overnight.

Uncle Benjy looked up at her approvingly.

"You looked real peaked yest'day," he said, "but you don't to-day, not a mite. An' yet-" He paused uncertainly, as though to account for some change. D'rindy had always been pretty, but this morning her dimpled prettiness was changed to beauty, touched with a light that had never been there before. A sweetness seemed to breathe from her like a fragrance. In her eyes was a wonderful softness, and at the same time a radiance, as though, like all the waking earth, her spirit, too, had been bathed in some celestial dew.

"It's such a lovely day!" she marveled at last, in a sweet wonder. "It is n't like any other day.”

"Some days is made on earth," Uncle Benjy beamed over to her, "an' never git far from it. An' some 's made in heaven, an' drop down-like some folks."

Only half consciously it was that D'rindy smiled. Uncle Benjy's love was a source of never-failing sweetness, but to-day his love only touched another chord deeper, sweeter still. Somewhere within her heart a light was shining-a light beside which all other lights were dim; a light, though, that did not pale the others, but absorbed them, blended them together in one light so great that suddenly in all the dark little places of heart and soul there was only light, light, a glory of light.

Uncle Benjy watched her face as she stood there lost in her joy, wrapped in her dream, and suddenly a great light broke over his own face.

'Sho! sho!" he breathed softly to himself. "Sho! sho!" Then, rousing himself after a bit, he cried excitedly, "D'rindy, if I'd a piece o' board jest right, I b'lieve I'd whittle."

D'rindy smiled over at him from her dream. There was only one thing Uncle Benjy whittled. Big boats he had built in his day; now he whittled toy ships for windmills. Scattered over the countryside they were, on many a barn and gable, and wherever you saw one of them sailing merrily through the sea of the air, you read a tale of Uncle Benjy's loving thought. Hardly a young couple but started out with one of them as a symbol of their voyage through life together. It was n't only that a ship was the fairest