to l'arn, too," she said with firm
decision as she scrambled up the rough and rocky mountain path.

For a time, as she progressed, her thoughts remained afield, wandering
in wonder of what that "furriner" might be up to with the tink-tink of
his hammer upon rocks. This soon passed, however, and they dwelt again
on the pool episode.

She had never seen a man dressed as the stranger had been. A carefully
made shooting-jacket had covered broad and well-poised shoulders which
were free of that unlovely stoop which comes so early to the
mountaineer's. A peaked cap of similar material had shaded slightly a
broad brow with skin as white as hers and whiter. Beneath it, eyes,
which, although they were engaged in anxious search when she had seen
them, she knew could, upon occasion, twinkle merrily, had gazed, clear,
calm, and brown. A carefully trimmed mustache had hidden the man's upper
lip, but his chin, again a contrast to the mountaineers' whom she had
spent her life among, showed blue from constant and close shaving. Yet,
different as he was from her people of the mountains, as she recalled
that face she could not hate him or distrust him.

She had never in her life seen any one in knickerbockers and leggins
before, and the memory of his amused her somewhat, yet she admitted to
herself that they had seemed quite "peart" as she peered at them through
the reeds.

But it was the modern up-to-date Winchester which he had held, all
poised to fly up to the ready shoulder should he find the splashing
animal which had attracted his attention by its noise, which, next to
his handsome, clean-cut face, had most aroused her admiration.

"Lordy! Joe'd give his eyes to hev a gun like that," she said.

And then she made a pun, unconscious of what the outer world calls such
things, but quite conscious of its humor. "Thought I was a b'ar," she
chuckled. "Well, I certainly _was_ b'ar!"

Feeling no further fear of any one, defiant, now that she was fully
clothed, of "furriners," rather hoping, as a matter of fact that she
might sometime meet this one again, she let her laugh ring out
unrestrained. A cat-bird answered it with a harsh cry; a blue-jay
answered him with a still harsher note. But then a brown thrush burst
into unaccustomed post-meridian song. Even his throbbing trills and
thrilling, liquid quaverings, had not more melody in them, however, than
had her ringing laughter.

CHAPTER II

Her laugh, too, roused more th