have selected
for my return." Then, seeing that she looked grave, he dropped into his
usual manner, and added, "Of course, Miss Douglas, I shall only remain a
little while--until the noon heat is over. You are looking for a rare
flower, I believe?"

"A fern."

"What is the color of its flower?"

Anne laughed again. "A fern has no flower," she explained. "See, it is
like this." And plucking a slender leaf, she described the wished-for
plant minutely. "It stretches out its long tip--so; touches the
earth--so; puts down a new little root from the leaf's end--so; and then
starts on again--so."

"In a series of little green leaps?"

"Yes."

Heathcote knew as much of ferns as he did of saurians; but no subject
was too remote for him when he chose to appear interested. He now chose
to appear so, and they talked of ferns for some time. Then Anne said
that she must finish the remaining quarter of the ravine. Heathcote
decided to smoke a cigar where he was first; then he would join her.

But when, half an hour later, she came into view again beside the brook
below him, apparently he had not stirred. "Found it?" he said.

"No."

"There is a sort of thin, consumptive, beggarly little leaf up here
which looks something like your description. Shall I bring him down?"

"No, no; do not touch it," she answered, springing up the rocks toward
him. "If it should be! But--I don't believe you know."

But he did know; for it was there. Very small and slender, creeping
close to the rocks in the shyest way, half lost in the deep moss; but
there! Heathcote had not moved; but the shrinking little plant happened
to have placed itself exactly on a line with his idle eyes.

"It is unfair that you should find it without stirring, while I have had
such a hard climb all in vain," said Anne, carefully taking up the
little plant, with sufficient earth and moss to keep it comfortable.

"It is ever so," replied her companion, lazily, watching the spirals of
cigar smoke above his head: "wait, and in time everything will come to
you. If not in this world, then certainly in the next, which is the
world I have selected for my own best efforts."

When the fern was properly bedded in the tin case, and the cover closed,
Anne sat down for a moment to rest.

"When shall we have lunch?" asked the smoker.

"_You?_"

"Yes; I am bitterly hungry."

"But you said you were only going to stay a short time."

"Half an hour longer."

"What time is