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The scent of the new locust-blossoms, the songs of the birds, and the beauty of the lights and shadows dancing on the river were as vivid in recollection as they had been in actuality; and after a severe and tedious illness it seemed that no tonic could prove so effectual as a visit to that dear old place, not seen for years, and which I had loved so well.

Bird to-night, and then I can take you with me before daylight," said Pan as he collected his Romney bundle with his left hand and me with his right and began to pad up the path from the spring-house towards the barn under a shower of the white locust-blossoms, which were giving forth their last breath of perfume in a gorgeous volume. "To-night?"

It was consoling to take from her bureau the letters which Paul had written, and read again what she had read many times, to look upon the laurel-leaf which he plucked in the woods at Donelson, the locust-blossoms which he gathered at Shiloh, the moss-rose which grew in a garden at Vicksburg, to read his noble and manly words of his determination to do his duty in all things.

Along the dusty "South Road" we would go, under the green lights and shadows of the maple-trees, over the two miles which stretch between Poughkeepsie town and "Locust Grove," past "Eastman's Park," with its smart decorations, past the small, unambitious houses, draped with many-hued, old-fashioned roses, that straggled along the dividing-line between the narrow restrictions of town and the fragrant wideness of the country, where the air was cool with the breath of the river, and the breezes brought suggestions of freshly-cut grass, just blown locust-blossoms, and the thousand sweet, indefinable scents of the woods.

Our house possessed four spacious rooms and a piazza; around it were grouped sheds and tents; the camp was a little way off on one side, the negro-quarters of the plantation on the other; and all was immersed in a dense mass of waving and murmuring locust-blossoms.

One sunshiny morning while the May flowers smiled under the hedge, when dew sparkled on the leaves, and the locust-blossoms shone creamy-white amid the soft green of the trees, the girls set about their much-planned flower gardening. Helen was passionately fond of plants, and had brought a jar of seeds of her favorites all the way from her eastern home.