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24 to play Good Samaritan so often as we got the chance? And wasn't this a rare good chance, Mistress Alice?"

"Rare and good, Mistress Pris. I only wish Judah Paddock might break his arm at our gate."

"Nay, that 's not a Good Samaritan at all, Elsie!"

Then with a delicious little giggle the two maids fell on their knees, and the sweet summer night was still.

"'T is too good to be true; they'll think better of it by morning," confided Samuel Cheeseboro to his pillow in the next room; but although David Alden, after a talk with his wife, looked upon the proposed arrangement as more serious than he had as first considered it, he did not withdraw his consent, and Priscilla made her preparations for the journey with a heart beating in some strange, new excitement, which she chose to attribute to her first visit so far from home.

The next morning but one, when the sun still dripped glory from his morning sea-bath, two horses, a frantic dog, two men, two women, and a baby grouped themselves about the flat boulder serving as horse-block in front of David Alden's cottage, and with all the bustle and chatter and running back and forth incident to such occasions, the husband, wife, baby, and a bag of varied provisions for man, woman, and child were packed upon Rufus, John Seabury's strong roadster, and moved forward to leave room for Lightfoot, to whose saddle