the mountain, the man with a queer blowpipe at
the roots of his tongue, he told me that he had left two lassies up here
on the lonely trail, with a badly hurt man. 'Woman!' says he, kind o'
fierce-like, 'if they were yer own bit lassies, ye'd scorch the rocks,
climbing to 'em.' 'Man!' says I," the Greylock woman paused,
half-laughingly, to catch her breath, "'I never laid eyes on them, or on
the broken-kneed man, either, but I'll warm the way, just the same.'
But, mercy! it took me most an hour to get here--though only a mile of
climbing--the old Man Killer is--so-o--fierce."

Her eye, at that, went to the fire, now brilliantly painting the trail,
to the pillowed figure upon the moss, with the sweater-roll in the
hollow of the injured knee.

"But, land sakes! I needn't ha' been in such a mad hurry getting here,
after all--giving my skin to make ear-laps for the old Man Killer!" she
cried, holding up two raw palms, flayed by indiscriminate climbing.
"For, my senses! they're no stray lambs o' tenderfoot--those 'twa bit
lassies'!" mimicking Andrew's blowpipe. "They know how to take care of
themselves in a pinch--and of somebody else, too!... And--and, see here,
what I've brought you, honey, rolled in the blanket for _him_!"

"Cake--choc'late cake! C-coffee!" Una gasped feebly, confronted by the
ghost of her everyday life.

She grasped the reality, though, of that normal life, somewhere waiting
for her, with the first bite into the brown-eyed cake, while her sweater
was restored to her thinly clad shoulders as the mountain woman spread
her blanket over the injured man and tucked it under him for a pillow.

"You--you're a 'trump,' little niece--letting me have it for-r so long,"
he said wistfully.

And Una shyly forbore to answer.

Occasionally it is easier to land gracefully after a long jump than a
short one in the case of an awkward gulf to be crossed! She saw that her
friend Pemrose, no relation at all to this extraordinary uncle, could
care for him and welcome him without embarrassment, while, with every
doubtful glance in his direction, she felt, still, as if she did not
quite know whether she was on her head or her heels.

She crept, for reassurance, very close to the mountain woman, the
typical June woman, with the normal rose in her cheeks, and the golden
buttercup for a heart, as she picnicked, subdued, by the trail fire.

"I don't think--oh! I don't believe I ever met anybody q-quite like you
before. But