and had names for all her favorites. The finest young gobbler was called Black Diamond, and he was apt to take unfair advantage of his mistress's partiality, and to get more than his share. So noisy they all were, that Narcissa did not hear the sound of approaching footsteps, nor know that some one had spoken to her twice in vain, and was now standing in silent amusement, watching the struggle for food.

It was a young man who had come so lightly up the steps of the old house that no sound had been heard. He had gone first to the front door, but his knock had 6 brought no answer, and catching the flutter of Narcissa's apron he had come round to the back porch and was standing within three feet of the girl and her clamorous brood.

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A very young man, hardly more than a boy, yet with a steady, manly look in his blue eyes, which contradicted the boyish curves of cheek and chin. He was plainly but neatly dressed, and he carried in one hand a small satchel, such as travelling agents affect. His eyes were bright and quick, and glanced about with keen interest, taking in every outline of the house, but coming always back to the girl who sat in the doorway, and who was unlike any girl he had seen before. The house was dim and gaunt, with a look of great age. One did not often, in this part of the country, see such tall doors, such quaint chimneys, such irregular outlines of roof and gable. The green-painted front door, with its brass knocker, and its huge, old-world hinges, seemed to him a great curiosity; so did the high stone steps, whose forlorn dignity suffered perpetual insult from the malapert weeds and grasses that laughed and nodded through the cracks and seams.

And in the dim, sunken doorway sat this girl, herself all soft and shadowy, with a twilight look in her eyes and in her dusky hair. The turkeys were the only part of it all that seemed to belong to the sort of life about here, the hard, bustling life of New England farm-people, 7 such as he had seen at the other houses along the way. If it were not for the turkeys, he felt that he should hardly find courage to speak, for fear it might all melt away into the gathering twilight,—house, maiden, and all,—and leave nothing but the tall elms that waved their spectral arms over the sunken roofs.

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As it was, however,—as the turkeys were making such a racket that the girl would never become aware of his presence unless he asserted himself in some way,—he stepped boldly forward and lifted his hat, for he had been 

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