wn just beyond the sleeping boy, to ripple off again in lesser
lofty heights, with beautiful fertile valleys and tossing streams
between. A little, lonely, helpless human soul he lay upon Nature's
majestic bosom, with the Infinite hand beneath his head.

In the morning when he waked billows of mist in silver splendour were
rolling slowly from the valleys below, like Nature's incense rising in
her sacred morning hour.

Although born in the mountains the mystic grandeur of the scene filled
Steve with awe. Rising, he gazed, a part of the worshipful silence,
and then as the sun burst suddenly into golden glory above the waves
of mist, his mind as suddenly seemed to shoot up from the mists of
fatigue and sleep. It was the peculiarly clear brain which sometimes
comes with long abstinence from food. Instantly he knew that he had
been fooled!

Turning to look back over the way he had come he said to himself:
"Them boys told me wrong, an' they did hit a purpose. They're lack
their pappy, they don't want to larn nothin' an' they don't want
nobody else ter nuther."

V

A DOUBLE RESCUE

The boy stood quietly on the mountain top and took his bearings. He
knew the way he had come, and remembering his previous impressions,
and what his friend on the moving wagon had said, he turned at last
and started down at an acute angle from the direction he had come. He
gathered again as he went whatever he knew to be good to eat in the
way of berries and herbs, but he soon began to feel so weary that he
could hardly drag himself along. Had he gotten out of the wilderness
only to plunge into it again and be lost? For as the day went on and
he met no one, saw no cabin or the long-looked-for railroad tracks,
discouragement and anxiety beset him. Noon passed again. Sometimes he
thought he must stop and rest, but he was afraid if he did he could
never get up again. His fatigue and hunger were far greater than in
his previous experience in the wilderness, for he had never eaten
heartily at the roadside cabin, knowing that food was not abundant
there. So he was not in the best of trim for a long fast and great
physical strain.

The remnants of his courage were wearing away when at last he seemed
to be emerging into a more open country. He was still in the woods,
but there was a subtle difference. He felt somehow that man was in
proximity somewhere, though he had as yet seen no sign. His pulses
quickened a little, and then suddenly a c