promise and asked its fulfilment. In reply she sent me the

written love story of Jasper Dale and Alice Reade. Now, when
Alice sleeps under the whispering elms of the old Carlisle

churchyard, beside the husband of her youth, that story may be
given, in all its old-timesweetness, to the world.

CHAPTER XXV
THE LOVE STORY OF THE AWKWARD MAN

(Written by the Story Girl)
Jasper Dale lived alone in the old homestead which he had named

Golden Milestone. In Carlisle this giving one's farm a name was
looked upon as a piece of affectation; but if a place must be

named why not give it a sensible name with some meaning to it? Why
Golden Milestone, when Pinewood or Hillslope or, if you wanted to

be very fanciful, Ivy Lodge, might be had for the taking?
He had lived alone at Golden Milestone since his mother's death;

he had been twenty then and he was close upon forty now, though he
did not look it. But neither could it be said that he looked

young; he had never at any time looked young with common youth;
there had always been something in his appearance that stamped him

as different from the ordinary run of men, and, apart from his
shyness, built up an intangible, visible" target="_blank" title="a.看不见的；无形的">invisiblebarrier between him and

his kind. He had lived all his life in Carlisle; and all the
Carlisle people knew of or about him--although they thought they

knew everything--was that he was painfully" target="_blank" title="ad.痛苦地；费力地">painfully, abnormally shy. He
never went anywhere except to church; he never took part in

Carlisle's simple social life; even with most men he was distant
and reserved; as for women, he never spoke to or looked at them;

if one spoke to him, even if she were a matronly old mother in
Israel, he was at once in an agony of painful blushes. He had no

friends in the sense of companions; to all outward appearance his
life was solitary and devoid of any human interest.

He had no housekeeper; but his old house, furnished as it had been
in his mother's lifetime, was cleanly and daintily kept. The

quaint rooms were as free from dust and disorder as a woman could
have had them. This was known, because Jasper Dale occasionally

had his hired man's wife, Mrs. Griggs, in to scrub for him. On
the morning she was expected he betook himself to woods and

fields, returning only at night-fall. During his absence Mrs.
Griggs was frankly wont to explore the house from cellar to attic,

and her report of its condition was always the same--"neat as
wax." To be sure, there was one room that was always locked

against her, the west gable, looking out on the garden and the
hill of pines beyond. But Mrs. Griggs knew that in the lifetime

of Jasper Dale's mother it had been unfurnished. She supposed it
still remained so, and felt no especialcuriosityconcerning it,

though she always tried the door.
Jasper Dale had a good farm, well cultivated; he had a large

garden where he worked most of his spare time in summer; it was
supposed that he read a great deal, since the postmistress

declared that he was always getting books and magazines by mail.
He seemed well contented with his existence and people let him

alone, since that was the greatest kindness they could do him. It
was unsupposable that he would ever marry; nobody ever had

supposed it.
"Jasper Dale never so much as THOUGHT about a woman," Carlisle

oracles declared. Oracles, however, are not always to be trusted.
One day Mrs. Griggs went away from the Dale place with a very

curious story, which she diligently spread far and wide. It made
a good deal of talk, but people, although they listened eagerly,

and wondered and questioned, were rather incredulous about it.
They thought Mrs. Griggs must be drawingconsiderably upon her

imagination; there were not lacking those who declared that she
had invented the whole account, since her reputation for strict

veracity was not wholly unquestioned.
Mrs. Griggs's story was as follows:--

One day she found the door of the west gable unlocked. She went
in, expecting to see bare walls and a collection of odds and ends.

Instead she found herself in a finely furnished room. Delicate
lace curtains hung before the small, square, broad-silled windows.

The walls were adorned with pictures in much finer taste than Mrs.
Griggs could appreciate. There was a bookcase between the windows

filled with choicely bound books. Beside it stood a little table
with a very dainty work-basket on it. By the basket Mrs. Griggs

saw a pair of tiny scissors and a silver thimble. A wicker
rocker, comfortable with silk cushions, was near it. Above the

bookcase a woman's picture hung--a water-colour, if Mrs. Griggs
had but known it--representing a pale, very sweet face, with

large, dark eyes and a wistful expression under loose masses of
black, lustrous hair. Just beneath the picture, on the top shelf

of the bookcase, was a vaseful of flowers. Another vaseful stood
on the table beside the basket.

All this was astonishing enough. But what puzzled Mrs. Griggs
completely was the fact that a woman's dress was hanging over a

chair before the mirror--a pale blue, silken affair. And on the
floor beside it were two little blue satin slippers!

Good Mrs. Griggs did not leave the room until she had thoroughly
explored it, even to shaking out the blue dress and discovering it

to be a tea-gown--wrapper, she called it. But she found nothing
to throw any light on the mystery. The fact that the simple name

"Alice" was written on the fly-leaves of all the books only
deepened it, for it was a name unknown in the Dale family. In

this puzzled state she was obliged to depart, nor did she ever
find the door unlocked again; and, discovering that people thought

she was romancing when she talked about the mysterious west gable
at Golden Milestone, she indignantly held her peace concerning the

whole affair.
But Mrs. Griggs had told no more than the simple truth. Jasper

Dale, under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full
of delicateromance and poesy, which, denied expression in the

common ways of life, bloomed out in the realm of fancy and
imagination. Left alone, just when the boy's nature was deepening

into the man's, he turned to this ideal kingdom for all he
believed the real world could never give him. Love--a strange,

almost mystical love--played its part here for him. He shadowed
forth to himself the vision of a woman, loving and beloved; he

cherished it until it became almost as real to him as his own
personality and he gave this dream woman the name he liked best--

Alice. In fancy he walked and talked with her, spoke words of love
to her, and heard words of love in return. When he came from work

at the close of day she met him at his threshold in the twilight--
a strange, fair, starry shape, as elusive and spiritual as a

blossom reflected in a pool by moonlight--with welcome on her lips
and in her eyes.

One day, when he was in Charlottetown on business, he had been
struck by a picture in the window of a store. It was strangely

like the woman of his dream love. He went in, awkward and
embarrassed, and bought it. When he took it home he did not know

where to put it. It was out of place among the dim old engravings
of bewigged portraits and conventional landscapes on the walls of

Golden Milestone. As he pondered the matter in his garden that
evening he had an inspiration. The sunset, flaming on the windows

of the west gable, kindled them into burning rose. Amid the
splendour he fancied Alice's fair face peeping archly down at him

from the room. The inspiration came then. It should be her room;
he would fit it up for her; and her picture should hang there.

He was all summer carrying out his plan. Nobody must know or
suspect, so he must go slowly and secretly. One by one the

furnishings were purchased and brought home under cover of
darkness. He arranged them with his own hands. He bought the

books he thought she would like best and wrote her name in them;
he got the little feminine knick-knacks of basket and thimble.

Finally he saw in a store a pale blue tea-gown and the satin