on her.

She dragged her eyes open again. She was lying on a black bear skin rug
before a roaring fire, and some one was kneeling beside her, tucking
cushions beneath her head. She had a glimpse of a khaki sleeve and a
lean brown wrist.

The warmth was delicious. She wanted to put her head back against those
pillows and sleep forever but memory was rousing, too.

Sleepily, she mumbled, "What time is it?"

The khaki shirt sleeve had withdrawn from view and the answering voice
came from a corner of the room.

"It's about two."

Two o'clock! The night gone--gone past redemption.

"Oh, Madre mia!" whispered Maria Angelina.

She struggled up on one elbow, her little face, scratched and stained,
staring wildly out from the dark thicket of hair. "But where am I? Where
is this place? Is it near the Lodge--near Wilderness Lodge?"

"We're miles from Wilderness," said the voice out of the shadows. "This
is Old Chief Mountain--on the Little Pine River."

Old Chief Mountain! Vaguely Maria Angelina recalled that stony peak, far
behind Old Baldy. . . . They had climbed the wrong mountain, indeed.
. . . And she had plunged farther away, in her headlong flight.

She stared about her. She saw a huge fireplace where the flames were
dancing. Above it, on a wide mantel, was a disarray of books,
cigar-boxes, pipes and papers, the papers weighted oddly with a jar of
obviously pickled frogs.

Upon the log walls several fishing rods were stretched on nails and a
gun, a corn-popper, a rough coat and cap and a fishing net were all hung
on neighboring hooks.

It was the cabin of some woodsman, and she seemed alone in it with the
woodsman and his dog, a tawny collie--the wild animal of her awakening.
Quietly alert, he lay now beside her, his grave, bright eyes upon her
face.

The woodsman she could not see.

"Now see if you can drink all of this." The khaki sleeve had appeared
from the shadows and was holding a steaming cup to her lips.

It was a huge cup made of granite ware. Obediently Maria Angelina drank.
The contents were scalding hot and while her throat seemed blistered the
warmth penetrated her veins in quick reaction.

"Lucky I didn't empty my coffeepot," said the voice cheerfully. "There
it was--waiting to be heated. Memorandum--never wash a coffeepot."

The voice seemed coming to her out of a dream. Thrusting back the
tangled hair from her eyes Maria Angelina lifted them incredulously to
the woodsman's face.

Was