ickly to the bottom of the pool and with all a
trout's agility and fearlessness, her clothing and beloved book clasped
tight against her bosom by her crooked left arm, her right arm sending
her with rapid strokes, when she was quite submerged, the full length of
the pool to its far end. There a fallen tree, relic of some woodland
tempest of years gone by, extended quite from bank to bank,
moss-covered, half hidden by small rushes and a little group of other
water-plants. She dived beneath this log with the last atom of endurance
she possessed and rose, perforce, upon the other side, stifling her
gasps, but drawing in the air in long, luxurious breathings. With her
mouth not more than half-an-inch above the water and her feet upon hard
bottom, she crouched there, watching through the screen of plants, her
clothes and book still pressed against her breast.

As she peered across the log between the rushes, she saw the stranger,
with a wary step, break through the undergrowth about the
pool--cautiously, expectantly. The water heaved a bit about her chin,
for her hidden chest was palpitating with the short, sharp intakes of a
chuckling laughter.

"Thought I were a b'ar, most likely!" she thought merrily, quite certain
of the safety of her hiding place. "Some furriner." All strangers, in
the mountains, are spoken of as "foreigners" and regarded with a hundred
times the wonder and distrust shown in cities to the native of far
lands, remote.

Her guess was shrewd. The stranger had plainly been attracted by the
sounds of her delighted splashing and had hurried up with rifle ready
for a shot at some big game. Now he stood upon the granite edges of the
pool, disappointed even in his instinctive search for footprints, with
only the slowly widening circles left upon the surface by her hurried
flight to show him that he had not wholly been mistaken in his thought
that something most unusual had recently occurred there in the "cove."
Eagerly his disappointed glance roved around the circling
thicket--nowhere did it see a sign. When it neared the place of her
concealment the hidden girl ducked, softly, making no undue commotion in
the swiftly running water at the pool's outlet, and the searching
glance passed on, quite unsuspecting, before her breath failed and her
head emerged again.

"Confound it!" the deeply disappointed youth exclaimed. "I was dead
certain I heard something. I _did_ hear something, too." He sighed. "But
it is g