craft of a spy in them; surely their clear and unexcited gaze was not
that of a keen hunter, unscrupulously on the trail of human game, who
has just learned through the innocent indiscretion of a girl who trusted
him, the secret of its covert.

As she looked at him she was convinced of two things, vastly comforting.
One was that Layson had no knowledge of the still; that, untrained to
mountain ways and unsuspicious, he had not even guessed at the secret
of the little hidden place among the mountains. Another was--and this
gave her, although she could have scarcely explained why, a greater
comfort than the first had--that had he had that knowledge he would not
have used it meanly.

She thrilled pleasantly with the complete conviction that the man whom
she had liked so much at first sight, the man who had shown such pluck
in saving her from fire, the man who had exhibited such thoughtfulness
and helpfulness in starting her upon the rocky path toward education,
was true and fair and fine--was, in the curt language of the mountains,
"decent."

When she left him at the foot of the rough path which wound up to the
cabin where she lived alone, she had quite recovered confidence in him.
She eagerly assented to his suggestion that they meet again, the
following day, for the continuation of her studies.

CHAPTER V

Their next lesson was in a new school-room. The clearing where they had
had their first, was, now, charred and blackened, not attractive, after
the small fire; so, after going to it, the following day to look it over
with that interest with which the man who has escaped from peril seeks
again, the scene of it in curiosity, they found another glade wherein to
carry on their delving after knowledge of the ABC's.

There, beneath a canopy of arching branches and the sky, between
rustling walls of greenery pillared by the mighty boles of forest trees,
they had the second lesson of the course which was to open up to Madge
the magic realm of books and of the learning hidden in them.

Nor did her investigations now, confine themselves, entirely to the
things the small book taught. She questioned Layson about a thousand
things less dry and matter-of-fact than shape of printed symbols and the
manner of their combination in the printed word. Life, life--that was to
her, as it has ever been to all of us, the most fascinating thing. Here
was one who had come from far, mysterious realms which she had vaguely
heard