a good idea. The next Freckles saw
of her she was paring potatoes. A little later she arranged the table.

She swept it with a broom, instead of laying a cloth; took the hatchet
and hammered the deepest dents from the tin plates, and nearly skinned
her fingers scouring the tinware with rushes. She set the plates an even
distance apart, and laid the forks and spoons beside them. When the cook
threw away half a dozen fruit-cans, she gathered them up and melted off
the tops, although she almost blistered her face and quite blistered her
fingers doing it. Then she neatly covered these improvised vases with
the Manila paper from the groceries, tying it with wisps of marshgrass.
These she filled with fringed gentians, blazing-star, asters, goldenrod,
and ferns, placing them the length of the dining-table. In one of the
end cans she arranged her red leaves, and in the other the fancy grass.
Two men, watching her, went away proud of themselves and said that she
was "a born lady." She laughingly caught up a paper bag and fitted it
jauntily to her head in imitation of a cook's cap. Then she ground the
coffee, and beat a couple of eggs to put in, "because there is company,"
she gravely explained to the cook. She asked that delighted individual
if he did not like it best that way, and he said he did not know,
because he never had a chance to taste it. The Angel said that was
her case exactly--she never had, either; she was not allowed anything
stronger than milk. Then they laughed together.

She told the cook about camping with her father, and explained that
he made his coffee that way. When the steam began to rise from the big
boiler, she stuffed the spout tightly with clean marshgrass, to keep the
aroma in, placed the boiler where it would only simmer, and explained
why. The influence of the Angel's visit lingered with the cook through
the remainder of his life, while the men prayed for her frequent return.

She was having a happy time, when McLean came back jubilant, from his
trip to the tree. How jubilant he told only the Angel, for he had been
obliged to lose faith in some trusted men of late, and had learned
discretion by what he suffered. He planned to begin clearing out a road
to the tree that same afternoon, and to set two guards every night, for
it promised to be a rare treasure, so he was eager to see it on the way
to the mills.

"I am coming to see it felled," cried the Angel. "I feel a sort of
motherly interest in t