Kilmeny of the Orchard

its own strange attractiveness, as some women with youth long passed still pre- serve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate, indestructible charm.

Eric walked drearily and carelessly about it, and finally sat down on a half fallen fence panel in the shadow of the overhanging spruce boughs. There he gave himsdf up to a reverie, poignant and bitter sweet, in which he lived OVer again everything that had passed in the orchard since his first meeting there with Kil- meny.

So deep was his abstraction, that he was conscious of nothing around him. He did not hear stealthy footsteps behind him in the dim spruce wood. He did not even see Kilmeny as she came slowly around the curve of the wild cherry lane. v

Kilmeny had sought the old orchard for the healing of her heartbreak, if healing were possible for her. She had no fear of encountering Eric there at that timle of the day, for she did not know that it was

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