bald talk.

"I don't know--a street urchin in a camp, that was all I was. If I got
licked, and I did, I was a coward for years and had to give up my
pennies. I used strategy, cunning, because I was afraid to fight till I
whipped Red. That made a difference. If the old fellow I liked so hadn't
given Red a quarter to lick me, I'd have been a coward yet. It made me
so mad I licked Red."

Lawrence laughed again merrily.

"That started me fighting, and I fought daily without provocation.
Dirty, scaly fisted little rat, whose stockings sagged around his shoes,
fighting for money in the saloons! The men liked me, too. All of them
called me their kid. I used to stand big-eyed and watch the faro-table
stacked with gold. There were days, too, when I went out alone over the
hills. I was ashamed of my little figures and afraid lest the boys find
my mud-pies, as Red had called a tiny dog that fell out of my pocket in
a fight.

"One day in an electric storm I saw a man and his horse killed by
lightning. I was awed, and electricity became my god. I worshiped it
like a little heathen. I even bought penny suckers and stuck them up in
the ground where the lightning played in stormy weather.

"It always seemed that the only things about the whole camp that fitted
with the hills were that girl in white and an old mountaineer who fought
with his fists alone against a gang of drunks. I don't know why. They
just belonged."

He stopped and lay a long time in silence. Claire thought over what he
had said, and her heart went out to this man as if he were still the
little gamin of the hills.

"Poor little chap," she murmured aloud.

Lawrence half raised himself in bed, talking again, and she was obliged
to push him back.

"It was all paradise, though, compared to that school where the Women's
Club sent me. I didn't want an education. Freedom was taken from me. I
was chained with discipline. I had seen too much and I told the other
marveling boys. They talked, and I was punished as a degenerate little
villain. I couldn't see why. That first winter was hell. They all
misunderstood me, and I them. I ached for my mountains again, and when
they sent me to the camp for the summer I whooped for joy.

"I must have been thirteen at that time. The men in camp paid the Widow
Morgan to keep me through the summer. She had a daughter seventeen or
thereabouts. Georgia had curly hair and blue eyes. She didn't pay much
attention to me at first. I did