196 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



sation, or, better yet, by chance young people 

 came by, and how vividly the youth stands out in 

 one's imagination as he leans nervously against 

 the old stone and murmurs little nothings that 

 elicit a scarcely audible reply ! 



The old milestone is intricately seamed, and 

 many the deep lines here and there, but Nature 

 has been the etcher. In vain has been my 

 search for hearts transfixed by arrows ; yet in 

 the century and more that passed when this was 

 in very fact a milestone, some such comedy 

 must have been acted within the reach of its 

 noontide shadow. 



S. M. stood for Stacy's Mill, and that was 

 three miles away as the crow flies, but all traces 

 of the figures indicating this fact have crumbled 

 to dust. Indeed, I have but the ghost of a 

 milestone, but ghosts are suggestive, if not lo- 

 quacious, and how glorious it would be if many 

 people we know were only ghosts ! Mahlon 

 Stacy, the proprietor, had five daughters I know 

 of, and perhaps there were others, and how un- 

 likely that this milestone should not have been 

 passed and repassed by anxious, meditative 

 swains, going, of course, to the mill on business, 



