er at the foot of that tree," he said. "That's
where her play-house is and that's where she goes when she's--that's
where she usually goes."

"Oh, yes," said Hale--"her play-house. Thank you."

"Not at all, sir."

Hale went on, turned from the path and climbed noiselessly. When he
caught sight of the beech he stopped still. June stood against it like
a wood-nymph just emerged from its sun-dappled trunk--stood stretched to
her full height, her hands behind her, her hair tossed, her throat tense
under the dangling little cross, her face uplifted. At her feet,
the play-house was scattered to pieces. She seemed listening to the
love-calls of a woodthrush that came faintly through the still woods,
and then he saw that she heard nothing, saw nothing--that she was in a
dream as deep as sleep. Hale's heart throbbed as he looked.

"June!" he called softly. She did not hear him, and when he called
again, she turned her face--unstartled--and moving her posture not at
all. Hale pointed to the scattered play-house.

"I done it!" she said fiercely--"I done it myself." Her eyes burned
steadily into his, even while she lifted her hands to her hair as though
she were only vaguely conscious that it was all undone.

"YOU heerd me?" she cried, and before he could answer--"SHE heerd
me," and again, not waiting for a word from him, she cried still more
fiercely:

"I don't keer! I don't keer WHO knows."

Her hands were trembling, she was biting her quivering lip to keep back
the starting tears, and Hale rushed toward her and took her in his arms.

"June! June!" he said brokenly. "You mustn't, little girl. I'm
proud--proud--why little sweetheart--" She was clinging to him and
looking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips met and
the man was startled. He knew now it was no child that answered him.

Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and around
Imboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-trunks,
past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees tossed out their
crooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of the ridge under which
the valley slept and above which the dark bulk of Powell's Mountain
rose. It was absurd, but he found himself strangely stirred. She was a
child, he kept repeating to himself, in spite of the fact that he knew
she was no child among her own people, and that mountain girls were even
wives who were younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt