d ever gazed,
contradicted the theory of the poetic soul. A poet must see beauty where
she had seen it--and a thousand wonders her eyes had not found.

His elation was uncanny. What could it mean?

He was driving now with a skill that was remarkable, a curious
smile playing about his drooping, Oriental eyelids. A wave of fierce
resentment swept her heart. She was a mere plaything in this man's life.
The real man she had never seen. What was he thinking about? What grim
secret lay behind the mysterious smile that flickered about the corners
of those eyes? He was not thinking of her. The mood was new and cold and
cynical, for all the laughter he might put in it.

She asked herself the question of his past, his people, his real
life-history. The only answer was his baffling, mysterious smile.

A frown suddenly clouded his face.

"Hello! Ye're running right into a man's yard!"

Mary lifted her head with quick surprise.

"Why yes, it's the stopping place for the parties that climb Mount
Mitchell. I remember it. We stayed all night here, left our rig, and
started next morning at sunrise on horseback to climb the trail."

"Pretty near the jumping-off place, then," he remarked. "We'll ask the
way to Cat-tail Peak."

He stopped the car in front of the low-pitched, weather-stained frame
house and blew the horn.

A mountain woman with three open-eyed, silent children came slowly to
meet them.

She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment spoke in a pleasant
drawl:

"Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?"

The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke into a roar of laughter.
The woman blushed and laughed with him. She couldn't understand what was
the matter with the man. Why should he explode over the simple greeting
in which she had expressed her pleasure at their arrival?

Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her business was to make folks
feel at home--so she laughed again with Jim.

"You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got in a car," he cried
at last. "We fly in these things sometimes. And when you said, `Won't
you 'light,'"--he paused and turned to his wife--"I could just feel
myself up in the air on that big old racer's back."

"Won't you-all stay all night with us?" the soft voice drawled again.

"Thank you, not tonight," Mary answered.

She waited for Jim to ask the way.

"No--not tonight," he repeated. "You happen to know an old woman by the
name of Owens who lives up here?