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HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FEB 2 19.2

Authorized edition.

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THE gray afternoon was wearing on to its chill close; the dark cope of immovable dun cloud overhead seemed to contract and grow closer to the silent world beneath it; and the steep, chalky hill, leading from the ancient village, with its hoary castle and church, up over the bleak, barren down, was a weary thing to climb.

The solitary traveler along that quiet road moved her limbs more slowly, and felt her breath coming more quickly and shortly, as she mounted higher and higher, and the gray Norman tower lessened and gradually sank out of sight behind her. But she toiled bravely on between the high tangled hedges, draped with great curtains of traveler's joy, now a mass of the silvery seed-feathers which the country children call “old man's beard," and variegated with the deep-purple leaves of dogwood, the crimson of briony and roseberry, the gleaming black of privet, and the gold and orange reds of ivy hangings; and, though her pace slackened to a mere crawl, she did not pause till she reached the brow of the hill, where the hedges ceased, and the broad white high-road wound over the open down.

Here, where the inclosed land ended, was a five-barred gate in the wild hedgerow, and here the weary pedestrian, depositing the

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