pping her young muscles, and, as unconscious of her wholly revealed
loveliness as any nymph of old mythology, scrambled from the water to
the bank and stood there where a shaft of comfortable sunshine found its
welcome way through rifted foliage above. To this she turned first one
bare shoulder, then the other, with as evident a sensuous delight as she
had shown when the cool water first closed over her. Then, throwing back
her head, she stood full in the brilliance, and, inhaling deeply, let
the sunlight fall upon the loveliness of her young chest. The delight of
this was far too great for voiceless pleasure, and her deep, rich
laughter rippled out as liquid and as musical as the tones of the tiny
waterfall above the pool. She raised a knee and then the other to let
the vitalizing sunlight fall upon them; then, with head drooped forward
on her breast, stood with her sturdy but delicious shoulders in its
shining path. Her happiness was perfect and she smiled continually, even
when she was not giving vent to audible expressions of enjoyment.

Suddenly, however, this idyllic scene was interrupted. In the woods she
heard the crashing of an awkward footstep and a muttered word or two in
a strange voice, as might come from a lowlander whose face has suffered
from the sting of a back-snapping branch.

For an instant she poised, frightened, on the bank. The intruder's
crashing progress was bringing him, as her ears plainly told her,
steadily in her direction. Panic-stricken, for a moment, she crouched,
hugging her bare limbs in an ecstasy of fear. To get her clothes and put
them on before he reached the pool would be impossible, a hasty glance
about her showed no cover thick enough to flee to.

One concealment only offered perfect hiding--the very pool from which
she had so recently emerged. She poised to slip again into the water
noiselessly and then caught sight of her disordered clothing on the
bank. To leave it there would as certainly reveal her presence as to
remain on the bank herself! Hastily she gathered it and the new spelling
book into her arms, and, with not ten seconds of spare time to find the
cover which she so desperately needed, endeavored to slip quietly into
the pool again.

Her certainty of movement failed her, this time, though, and one foot
slipped. Into the pool she went, half-falling, and with a splash which,
she was certain, would be audible a hundred yards away. Terrified anew
by this, she dived qu