ith the cress, lay a half dozen fine rainbow trout.

"How pretty!" he exclaimed. "So that is what you have been doing!"

"They are for you," she said simply.

"For me?" he cried.

She nodded brightly; "For you and Mr. Lagrange. I know you like them
because you said you were fishing when you heard my violin. And I thought
that you wouldn't want to leave your picture, to fish for yourself, so I
took them for you."

The artist concealed his embarrassment with difficulty; and, while
expressing his thanks and appreciation in rather formal words, studied her
face keenly. But she had tendered her gift with a spontaneous naturalness,
an unaffected kindliness, and an innocent disregard of conventionalities,
that would have disarmed a man with much less native gentleness than Aaron
King.

Leaving the basket of trout in his hand, she turned, and swung the empty
creel over her shoulder. Then, putting on her hat, she picked up her rod.

"Oh--are you going?" he said.

"You have finished your work for to-day," she answered

"But let me go with you, a little way."

She shook her head. "No, I don't want you."

"But you will come again?"

"Perhaps--if you won't stop work--but I can't promise--you see I never
know what I am going to do up here in the mountains," she answered
whimsically. "I might go to the top of old 'Berdo' in the morning; or I
might be here, waiting for you, when you come to paint."

He was putting his things in the box--thinking he would persuade her to
let him accompany her a little way; if she saw that he really would paint
no more. When he bent over the box, she was speaking. "I hope you will,"
he answered.

There was no reply.

He straightened up and looked around.

She was gone.

For some time, he stood searching the glade with his eyes, carefully;
listening to catch a sound--a puzzled, baffled look upon his face. Taking
his things, at last, he started up the little path. But before he reached
the old gate, a low laugh caused him to whirl quickly about.

There she stood, beside the spring--a teasing smile on her face. Before he
could command himself, she danced a step or two, with an elfish air, and
slipped away through the green willow wall. Another merry laugh came back
to him and then--the silence of the little glade, and the sound of the
distant waters.

With the basket of fish in his hand, Aaron King went slowly to camp;
where, when Conrad Lagrange saw what the artist carried so carefu