as there to tramp and ride and fish
and be companion and guide.

It was most beautiful far back from the oiled roads and trimmed hedges,
for here were only woodland voices and languorous forest fragrances.
Here, too, hid all those wild flowers that in childhood she had known
and fancifully christened--and since forgotten, and here two people with
the lilt of this abundant June song in their hearts could leave a few of
their years by the roadside and forget them. To Mary Burton it was all a
rediscovery and a miracle. He had promised to give her back the message
of her hills. He was giving her back the joy of life.

One afternoon she and Jefferson Edwardes were tramping toward a brook
where the trout would be flashing like phantom darts, and as he led the
way along a narrow trail she followed him with a smile on her lips.

At a sheer twist around the hill's shoulder he stopped and pointed his
hand. The view from there was almost county-wide, billowing away across
heights and depths to a blue merging of hill and sky.

As she stood by his side her eyes and parted lips spoke her unworded
appreciation and the man's gaze came back from the broad picture and
dwelt upon her.

"It's strange," she said finally with a vaguely puzzled expression,
"that I who was born in just such hills as these should now be realizing
their wonder for the first time."

But her companion laughed at her seriousness. "When you knew them
first," he reminded her, "you had nothing else with which to compare
them. It is one who comes from the north who finds a marvel in the
bigness and softness of southern stars. Now you have been away--and have
come home, dearest."

She was standing very lancelike and straight by the slender bole of a
silver birch. A golden sun flooded richly through the greenery. Overhead
was a tunefully unflecked sky and into the shadows crept a richness of
furtively underlying color and echoes of color. It was all vivid and
beautiful and the girl standing there seemed to dominate its vividness
and its beauty. But her eyes were grave, even when a shaft of the
radiance struck her delicately blossoming cheeks and played upon the
escaping locks with which the breeze played, too.

"Do you know, I suppose in a way I ought to hate you?" she told the man,
and he swiftly demanded:

"Hate me? In heaven's name, why?"

"When a woman has been deluded into believing herself a bird of
paradise ... and has been content with her feathers, i