een two stones, his
eyes on the bear. It was a strange scene and rather weirdly incongruous.
David no longer sensed it. He still held the girl's hand as he seated
her on the rock, and he looked into her eyes, smiling confidently. She
was, after all, his little chum--the Girl who had been with him ever
since that first night's vision in Thoreau's cabin, and who had helped
him to win that great fight he had made; the girl who had cheered and
inspired him during many months, and whom he had come fifteen hundred
miles to see. He told her this. At first she possibly thought him a
little mad. Her eyes betrayed that suspicion, for she uttered not a word
to break in on his story; but after a little her lips parted, her breath
came a little more quickly, a flush grew in her cheeks. It was a
wonderful thing in her life, this story, no matter if the man was a bit
mad, or even an impostor. He at least was very real in this moment, and
he had told the story without excitement, and with an immeasurable
degree of confidence and quiet tenderness--as though he had been
simplifying the strange tale for the ears of a child, which in fact he
had been endeavouring to do; for with the flush in her cheeks, her
parted lips, and her softening eyes, she looked to him more like a child
now than ever. His manner gave her great faith. But of course she was,
deep in her trembling soul, quite incredulous that he should have done
all these things for _her_--incredulous until he ended his story with
that day's travel up the valley, and then, for the first time, showed to
her--as a proof of all he had said--the picture.

She gave a little cry then. It was the first sound that had broken past
her lips, and she clutched the picture in her hands and stared at it;
and David, looking down, could see nothing but that shining disarray of
curls, a rich and wonderful brown, in the sunlight, clustering about her
shoulders and falling thickly to her waist. He thought it indescribably
beautiful, in spite of the manner in which the curls and tresses had
tangled themselves. They hid her face as she bent over the picture. He
did not speak. He waited, knowing that in a moment or two all that he
had guessed at would be clear, and that when the girl looked up she
would tell him about the picture, and why she happened to be here, and
not with the woman of the coach, who must have been her mother.

When at last she did look up from the picture her eyes were big and
starin