A VILLAGE OPHELIA BY ANNE REEVE ALDRICH NEW YORK: _W. Dillingham Co., Publishers_, MDCCCXCIX. CONTENTS A VILLAGE OPHELIA A STORY OF THE VERE DE VERE A LAMENTABLE COMEDY AN AFRICAN DISCOVERY AN EVENING WITH CALLENDER A VILLAGE OPHELIA On the East end of Long Island, from Riverhead to Greenport, a distance of about thirty miles, two country roads run parallel. The North road is very near the Sound and away from the villages; lonely farm-houses are scattered at long intervals; in some places their number increases enough to form a little desolate settlement, but there is never a shop, nor sign of village life. That, one must seek on the South road, with its small hamlets, to which the "North roaders," as they are somewhat condescendingly called, drive across to church, or to make purchases. It was on the North road that I spent a golden August in the home of Mrs. Libby. Her small gray house was lovingly empaled about the front and sides by snow-ball bushes and magenta French-lilacs, that grew tenderly close to the weather-worn shingles, and back of one sunburnt field, as far as the eye could see, stretched the expanse of dark, shining scrub-oaks, beyond which, one knew, was the hot, blue glitter of the Sound.