blowse of coppery hair." A fragment of verse ran through his mind:

"Tawny-flecked, russet-brown, in a tangle of gold,
The billowy sweep of her flame-washed hair,
Like amber lace, laid fold on fold,
Or beaten metal beyond compare."

"Delicacy and strength!" he muttered, as he climbed again to the leather
seat. "The steel blade in the silk scabbard. With that face in repose
she might have been a maid of honor of the Stuarts' time! Yet when she
laughed--"

* * * * *

The girl walked on up the highway with a lilting stride, now and then
laughing to herself, or running a few steps, occasionally stopping by
some hedge to pull a leaf which she rubbed against her cheek, smelling
its keen new scent, or stopping to gaze out across the orange-green
belts of sunny wind-dimpled fields, one hand pushing back her mutinous
hair from her brow, the other shielding her eyes. When she had passed
beyond the ken of the stranded motor, she began to sing a snatch of a
cabin song, her vivid red lips framing themselves about the absurd words
with a humorous exaggeration of the soft darky pronunciation. Beneath
its fun her voice held a haunting dreamy quality, as she sang, sometimes
in the blaze of sun, sometimes with leaf-shadows above her through
which the light spurted down in green-gilt splashes. Once she stopped
suddenly, and crouching down by a thorn-hedge, whistled--a low mellow
tentative pipe--and in a moment a brown-flecked covey of baby partridges
rushed out of the grass to dart instantly back again. She laughed, and
springing up, threw back her head and began a bird song, her slender
throat pulsing to the shake and reedy trill. It was marvelously done,
from the clear, long opening note to the soaring rapture that seemed to
bubble and break all at once into its final crescendo.

Farther on the highroad looped around a strip of young forest, and she
struck into this for a short cut. Here the trees stirred faintly in the
breeze, filling the place with leafy rustlings and whisperings; yet it
was so still that when a saffron-barred hornet darted through with an
intolerant high-keyed hum, it made the air for an instant angrily
vocal, and a woodpecker's tattoo at some distance sounded with startling
loudness, like a crackling series of pistol-shots.

In the depth of this wood she sat down to rest on the sun-splashed roots
of a tree. Leaning back against the seamed trunk, her felt