fill the earth and sky until one feels that words are a sacrilege.
Neither of them spoke for minutes, and his heart grew bold in the stillness. No girl could be still who was unmoved.
She was seated just in front of him on the left, with her hand idly rippling the surface of the silvery waters, gazing at the wooded cliff on the river banks clothed now in their gorgeous robes of yellow, purple, scarlet, and gold.
The soft strains of distant music came from a band in the fort, and her hand in the rippling water seemed its accompaniment.
Ben was conscious only of her presence. Every sight and sound of nature seemed to be blended in her presence. Never in all his life had he seen anything so delicately beautiful as the ripe rose colour of her cheeks, and all the tints of autumn's glory seemed to melt into the gold of her hair.
And those eyes he felt that God had never set in such a face before—rich amber, warm and glowing, big and candid, courageous and truthful.
"Are you dead again?" she asked, demurely.
"Well, as the Irishman said in answer to his mate's question when he fell off the house, 'not dead—but spacheless.'"
He was quick to see the opening her question with its memories had made, and took advantage of it.
"Look here, Miss Elsie, you're too honest, independent, and candid to play hide-and-seek with me. I want
