The House Where Love Lived

It was past the middle of October, and Allison's injured hand was not only free of its bandages, but he had partially regained the use of it. Doctor Jack still lingered, eagerly seizing every excuse that presented itself.

"I suppose I ought to be back looking for another job," he regretfully observed to Allison, "but I like it here, and besides, I want to hear you play on your fiddle before I go."

Allison laughed and hospitably urged him to stay as long as he chose. Colonel Kent added, heartily, after an old Southern fashion: "My house is yours."

Crimson and golden leaves rained from the maples, and the purple winds of Autumn swept them into drifts at the roadside. Amethystine haze shimmered in the valleys and lay, cloud-like, upon the distant hills. Through the long aisles of trees a fairy patter of tiny furred feet rustled back and forth upon the fallen leaves. Only a dropping nut or a busy squirrel broke the exquisite peace of the forest, where the myriad life of the woods waited, in hushed expectancy, for the tide of the year to turn.

Like a scarlet shuttle plying through the web of Autumn, the big red touring car hummed and whirred, with a happy young man at the wheel and a laughing girl beside him. Juliet's momentary self-consciousness was gone, and she was her sunny self again, though she still occasionally wept in secret, longing for her brother.