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In the silence of the night I could hear the crackle of the buds as they cast off their winter coverings, hear the whisper of the grass, which the countryman declares is the sound of growing blades, hear the murmur of all animate things as they rose to welcome the Springtide. My own heart leapt up with a renewal of hope.

First I saw the Junker and Sir Franz, who had fallen out about me, a foolish maid; then it was my Ann, pining with grief, paler than ever with a nun's veil on her; or standing by the Pegnitz, on the very spot where, erewhile, in the sweet Springtide, a forsaken maid had cast herself in.

The springtide hue of the wild flower at her breast was matched in her cheek. Her head was held high, bringing out the pure and lovely line of chin and throat. To Hal it seemed that he had never seen anything so beautiful and desirable. "Is it a bet?" Festus Willard's quiet voice was full of amusement. "Have you laid a wager as to which will keep silent longest?"

But he had not come for a long time, and she had dropped asleep and wakened to his weary face beside her bed, and to hear him saying that, thank God, they had got out the horses, although the stables were all but in ruins. As she thought over these things the fulness of her love for her husband swept her heart like a Springtide.

No longer do we dream ourselves in a garden of springtide blossoms; we can only look upon canvas trees and paper flowers. No longer are we charmed away to that imagined spot where journeys end in lovers' meeting; we can only look upon love in a parlor and notice that the furniture is natural.

He had studied in the village school from childhood and, not having yet attained to literary rank, had come, according to custom, to present himself for examination at Peking. While in that city, he consorted, before his springtide, with the young libertines, the "willow twigs" of his country; and, in order to gain experience, frequented the theatres and music-halls.

Such was Jeanne Bécu in the first bloom of her dainty beauty, the prettiest grisette who ever set hearts fluttering in Paris streets; with laughter dancing in her eyes, a charming pertness at her red lips, grace in every movement, and the springtide of youth racing through her veins. When Voltaire first saw her portrait, he exclaimed, "The original was fashioned for the gods."

Or, rather, I was with the Past, in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope! It was an after-birth of youth my love for that young heart! It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely were our earliest years!

His coat was gathered in at his waist, and was patched with as many colors as there are stripes upon a Maypole in the springtide. On his head he wore a great tall leathern cap, and across his knees rested a stout quarterstaff of blackthorn, full as long and heavy as Robin's.

And he had found there naught but ruins, the rotted trunk of a tree that could never put forth another springtide; and he had heard there naught but the supreme rending of the old social edifice, near to its fall.