e boy's picture of Penelope Blight, the
little girl in the patched blue frock and broken shoes, standing by the
mountain stream, holds in the memory with clear and softening colors.

She leaned, a tiny Amazon, on the stick which towered to twice her
height, and she said to me: "Boy, you hadn't otter be afraid of snakes."

In my shame I answered nothing and my teeth chattered, for I was very
cold from fright and the ducking.

Then she said to me: "Boy, you had otter come over to our house and get
warm."

I remembered my dignity, and, in a tone of patronage assumed by right
of the one year of difference in our ages, I asked: "Where is your
house, young un?"

She pointed over her shoulder, over the quivering body of the snake,
across the bushes, and through the green light of the woods. There I
saw a bit of blue sky, cut by a thin spire of smoke.

"Yonder's our patch," she said, "and father will give you something to
warm you up."

I asked: "Who is your father, little un?"

She drew herself up very straight, and even the blue ribbon in her hair
rose in majesty as she answered. Then I almost tumbled into the pool
again, for she said: "Some call him the Professor."

CHAPTER II

The words of Penelope Blight fell on my ears as chillingly as the
rattler's whir. That the prophecies of Mr. Pound and Squire Crumple
had come to nothing was little consolation for me. So near had they
been to fulfilment that it seemed that I must have been spared only for
a harder fate, and the figure of Stacy Shunk peering at me through the
top of his hat, uttering his ominous warning, rose before my startled
eyes. I should have run, but my retreat was barred, the girl blocking
the way over the shelving beach. I took a backward step and for an
instant the Prophet Pound's star was in the ascendant, for the foot
touched the water. So great was my dread of the Professor that had I
been in a position to choose my course I should have taken my chances
in the stream, but I lost my self-control with my balance and made a
desperate clutch at the air.

Again the brown hand caught mine, and this time it did not release me.

"Come with me," my small captor said in a tone of command.

I did not resist, but I went with fear. To resist would have been a
confession of cowardice, and there is no pride of courage like that of
a boy of ten in a girl's presence. I might have made excuses, but with
that little spire of smoke so close at h