.

On their way home they took up the subject of the strange musician whose
queer comings and goings had begun to be of more than usual interest to
them.

"He acts--in a--a stealthy way," said Grace, striving for the exact
words to express her meaning. "He positively sneaked away from us this
morning. It seems to me people don't act like that unless they are
afraid of something."

"He might just be afraid of people," Betty reminded her. "Or he may
dislike people and want to be left alone. That would account for the
name of 'hermit' that the natives around here have given him."

"But an ordinary hermit wouldn't be able to play like a virtuoso,"
objected Amy.

"Well, nobody said he was an ordinary hermit," retorted Mollie.

"To change the subject before you girls get to the hair-pulling stage,"
laughed Betty, as she turned Nigger's head toward the ranch, "I wish we
could do something for Dan Higgins and Meggy. It's a shame for that
splendid, loyal girl to have to spend all her youth, when she might be
having good times like other girls, in doing the kind of work that's
only fit for a man to do."

"And she's so brave about it, too," added Grace admiringly. "She keeps
her head up like a thoroughbred."

"I've asked her to come over to the ranch," Betty went on thoughtfully.
"She has a passion for horses, you know, and I told her we'd have Andy
Rawlinson pick her out a beauty from the corrals. I could see that she
was awfully tempted, but she said no, she couldn't leave her father."

"Probably the real reason she refused was because she hadn't decent
clothes to wear," said Mollie sagaciously. "The poor girl is almost in
rags."

"I wish we could help," sighed Betty. "But she and her father are proud,
like most of the other people around here. They just have to stand on
their own feet."

"I wonder if they have enough to eat," mused Amy. "It would be dreadful
to think of them actually hungry."

"Oh, I guess there's no danger of that," said Mollie. "As long as there
are wild animals in the woods and Dan Higgins and Meggy have guns they
won't starve to death."

"And maybe they really will find gold, anyway," said Grace hopefully.

They rode along silently for a while. In their abstraction they had
taken the long way home, instead of cutting directly across the ranch in
the direction of the house. They were on a rather narrow trail, so
narrow, that they could not ride two abreast but were strung out in
single fil