command of the two-alone situation he desired.

"Hasn't this been a lovely, long day?" asked Rose Mary as she turned the butter into a large jar and pressed a white cloth close over it with a stone top. "To-night is the full April moon and I've got a surprise for you, if you don't find it out too soon. Will you walk over to Tilting Rock, beyond the barn-lot, with me after supper and let me show you?"

"Will I cross the fields of Elysium to gaze over the pearly ramparts?" demanded Everett with boyish enthusiasm, if not a wholly accurate use of mythological metaphor. "Let's cut supper and go on now! What do you say? Why wait?"

"I'm afraid," laughed Rose Mary as she prepared to close up the wide window and leave everything in shipshape for the night. "A woman oughtn't to risk feeding a hungry man cold moonbeams instead of hot hoecake. Besides, I have to see everybody safely tucked in before I can leave. Aren't they all a precious houseful of early-to-bed chickens? The old Sweeties have forgotten there is such a thing as the moon and Stonie hasn't—found it out—yet." And with a mischievous backward glance, Rose Mary led the way up the lilac path to the Briars on top of the hill just as the old bell sounded two wobbly notes, their uncertainty caused by the rivalry of the General and Tobe over the pulling of the ropes.

And it was quite two hours later that she and Everett made their way across the barn-lot over to the broad, moss-covered Tilting Rock that jutted out from a little hackberry-covered knoll at the far end of the pasture.

"Now look—and smell in deep!" exclaimed Rose Mary excitedly as she pointed back to the Briars.

"Why—why!" exclaimed Everett under his breath, "it's enchantment! It's a dream—am I awake?"

And indeed a very vision spread itself out before the wondering man. The low roof and wide wings of the Briars, with the delicate traceries of vines over the walls and gables, shone a soft, old-brick pink in the glow of moonlight, and over and around it all gushed a very shower of shimmering white blossoms, surrounding the house like a mist around an early blooming rose. And as he looked, wave on wave of fragrance beat against Everett's face and poured over his head.

"What is it?" he demanded breathlessly, as if dizzy from a too deep drinking of the perfume.

"Don't you know? It's the locust trees that have bloomed out 

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