an vagrant birds into attention. She had
emerged from the abrupt little valley and was entering upon a plateau
which had been left comparatively open by the removal of great trees,
sacrificed to furnish ties for the new railroad building in the
lowlands. The place was littered with the discarded tops of pines and
other woodland rubbish and seemed forlorn and wrecked. She swept her
eyes about with the glance of a proprietor, for Madge Brierly owned all
of this as well as most of the land through which the brook which
deepened into the pool of her adventure flowed. Indeed the girl was
counted rich among her fellows and owned, also, land down in the valley
on which she would not live, but which she rented for an annual sum to
her significant, although it would not have kept a lowland belle in
caramels.

In the center of the disordered clearing just before her, was the person
who, like the birds, had been roused to keen attention by the maiden's
ringing laugh. She saw him first while he was peering here and there,
astonished, to learn whence the sound had come, and, with the
instinctive caution of the mountain-bred, she quickly stepped behind a
clump of laurel, through which she peered at him.

He was a man of sixty years, or thereabouts, wiry, tough and well
preserved. His hair, of grizzled grey, was longer than most men wore
theirs, even among the mountains, where there are few conventionalities
in male attire. He was dressed in the ordinary garb of the Kentucky
planter of the better class--broad soft hat, flowing necktie, long
frock-coat, which formed a striking contrast to the coarse high-boots
into the tops of which his trousers had been tucked--and yet he hardly
seemed to her to belong to the class of gentlemen to which his dress
apparently assigned him. His face was coarse and hard, his eyes, as he
peered about in search of her, were "shifty," she assured herself. His
hands were large and crudely fashioned.

"'Pears like 'most ev'ry one is roamin' 'round my land to-day," she
thought. "I wonder what _this_ one is up to, thar?"

For fully fifteen minutes her curiosity remained unsatisfied, for,
startled by the ringing laugh, the stranger spent at least a quarter of
an hour in furtive peering, here and there, about the clearing, plainly
searching for the laughter. At no time, however, did he approach her
hiding place near enough to see her, and, finally, apparently satisfied
that his ears had fooled him, or that who