the kettle she was scouring. But it did no good to weep, as Sally, glancing at the waning sunlight, discovered. It only delayed and lengthened household tasks which had to be accomplished before she, too, could depart. So she wiped her eyes determinedly and pushed back her curls and presently a thrush, singing in a lilac bush near the kitchen door, heard his song echoed inside—waveringly, at first, then with gathering courage and determined joyfulness, and at last the hurt was washed from the young girl's heart with melody.
It had been arranged that Sally was to walk to the Widow Ball's house, a distance of a mile or two beyond the Todd farm, in the direction of Millburn village. Thus it was toward the south that Sally turned her face when, leaving a house clean and sweet-smelling behind her, she stepped out and locked the kitchen door behind her, hiding the enormous key beneath a flat stone by the well—toward the south and along a lane quiet with sun-flecked shadows and fragrant from the wild honey-suckle that grew along the road edge.
Approaching the Widow Ball's place, Sally looked curiously at the old stone house which had been finished in 1743, after much time and labor spent in preparing the stone, while the owners, Timothy and Esther Ball, lived in a log cabin on adjoining property. Now the date, 1743, with the
