alien sound. Once, from the far distance, she did catch
a faint metallic clinking, as of the striking of a hammer against rock,
but it occurred once only, and she finally attributed it to the
mysterious doings of the railroad people in the valley.

Down the path she sped, now, rapidly and eagerly. It was plain that
something which she planned to do when she reached her destination
filled her with anticipation of delight, for her red lips parted in a
smile of expectation as charming as a little child's, her breath came in
eager pantings not due wholly to the mere exertion of the rapid downward
climb. When, beyond a sudden turn in the rude trail, she suddenly saw
spread before her the smooth waters of a pool, formed by the creek in a
hill-pocket, she cried aloud with pleasure.

"Ah," said she. "Ah! Now here we be!"

But it was not at this first pool she stopped. Leaving the path she
skirted its soft edge, instead, and, after having passed down stream
some twenty yards or more, pushed her skilled way between the little
trees of a dense thicket and into a dim, shadowy woods chamber on
beyond, where lay another pool, velvety, en-dusked, save for the flicker
of the sunlight through dense foliage.

Here her delight was boundless. She ran forward with the eagerness of a
thirsty bird, and, leaning on the bank, supported by bent arms, bent
down and drank with keenest relish of the cool spring waters gathered in
the "cove," then dabbled her brown slender fingers in the shining
depths, watching, with a smile, concentric, widening ripples as they
hurried out across the glassy surface, to the ferned bank beyond. A few
yards away a hidden cascade murmured musically. Through the sparse and
tender foliage of spring above her, the sunlight flickered in bright,
moving patches of golden brilliance, falling on the breast of her rough,
homespun gown, like decorations given by a fairy queen. Around the
water's edges budding plants and deep-hued mosses made a border lovely
everywhere, and for long spaces deep and soft as velvet pile. A thrush
called softly from the forest depths behind her. From the other side
his mate replied in a soft twittering that told of love and confidence
and comfort. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of a young beech, near
by, and sat in the first crotch to look down at her, chattering. A light
breeze sighed among the branches, swaying them in languorous rhythm,
rustling them in soft and ceaseless whisperings.