g by an altar fire. The
roughness of the ground did not annoy her--her feet had not known
dancing upon polished waxen wood; the lack of spectators did not deter
her--those whom she had learned to know and love, the mountains, trees,
the squirrels, and birds, were there.

In the very midst of the abandon of this rustic symphony of movement,
the thought came to her that the precious spelling-book was lying on the
rock, near by, quite soaked, neglected. She sped to it and took it to
the fire's edge, where, opening its pages one by one, so that each would
get the warmth, she held it as close as she opined was safe. Having
dried it until she no longer feared the wetting it had had would
seriously harm its usefulness (the lovely smoothness of its magic leaves
was gone, alas! beyond recall) she paused there for a moment, herself
still far from dry, with a bare foot held out to the blaze, and studied
curiously one of the book's pages.

Thereon the letters of the alphabet, large, ominous, suggestive to her
mind of nothing in the world but curlycues, loomed, mystifying. For the
first time it occurred to her that in securing the small volume she had
not, as she had thought to do, solved the problem of an education. The
characters, she saw to her dismay, meant nothing to her. In the absence
of a teacher she could not learn from them!

Alas, alas! The matter was a tragedy to her. How could she have been so
stupid as to fail to think of this at first? She stood there with
flushed face, despairing, looking at the mystic symbols with slowly
sinking heart.

Suddenly, though the crackling of the fire filled her ears, she was
aware, by some subtle sense, that she was now not wholly solitary there.
Without a sound to tell her, she was conscious that some other person
had within the moment come into the clearing. Hastily she looked about.
To her amazement, and, for a moment, to her great dismay, she saw,
standing on the clearing's edge, the young man who had, not long before,
unknowingly invaded her seclusion at the pool.

Instantly her body became fiercely conscious. Prickling thrills, not due
to bonfire heat, shot over it. Shame sent the blood in mantling blushes
to her cheeks, although she tried to stop it. Why should she blush at
sight of him? True, she had been there in the water, bare as any
new-born babe, when he had reached the pool's edge--but he had not seen
her. To him she, quite undoubtedly, was a mere strange mountain maid