one, now."

At length he turned away in a bad temper, and presently she heard him
crashing awkwardly through brush and brake, departing.

Shivering from her long submersion in the gelid waters of the mountain
stream, she cautiously emerged, struggling between light-hearted
laughter at the comedy of her escape and rueful worry about the fact
that she was not only deeply chilled but had no clothes which were not
wet. Her soaked spelling-book, also, gave her much concern. Before she
spread her clothing out in the sparse sunlight, she took the dripping
volume to the warmest little patch of brilliance on any of the rocks
surrounding, and, as she opened its leaves to catch the sunshine,
examined it with loving solicitude to find how badly it was damaged.

"Fast color," she said happily, looking at the mighty letters of its
coarse black print. "Ain't faded none, nor run, a mite." This plainly
give her great relief. Deftly she turned each leaf, using the extremest
care to avoid tearing them, handling them with loving touch. Between
them she laid little pine cones, so that air might circulate among them
and assist the process of their drying. Then, having wrung her clothing
till her strong, brown, slender wrists ached, she spread that out in
turn, but on less favored rocks, and, as her feeling of security
increased, fell into an unconscious dance, born of the necessity of
warmth from exercise, but so full of grace, abandon, joy, that a poet
might have fancied her a river-nymph, tripping to the reed-born music of
the goat-hoofed Pan.

When, later, she had slowly dressed, and was kneeling at the pool's
edge, using the now placid surface of the water as a mirror to assist
her in rough-fashioning her hair into a graceful knot, she heard again,
from a great distance, a metallic "tink, tink-tink," which had caught
her ear when she had first stood on the pool's edge. It came, she knew,
from far, however, and so did not rouse her apprehension, but, mildly,
it aroused her curiosity.

"Hull kentry's 'full o' furriners," she mused. "That railroad buildin'
business in the valley brings 'em. Woods ain't private no more." Again
the tink, tink-tink. "Sounds like hammerin' on rocks," she thought.
"It's nearer than th' railroad builders, too. I wonder what--but then,
them furriners are wonderful for findin' out concernin' ev'rythin'."

She hugged her pulpy spelling book against her breast with a little
shiver of determination. "_I'm_ goin'