l furriner." Little Dave
Dennison, of all those opposed to him, alone held out. He appeared to be
proof against Keith's utmost efforts to be friends.

One day, however, Dave Dennison did not come to school. Keith learned
that he had fallen from a tree and broken his leg--"gettin' hawks' eggs
for Phrony," Keith's informant reported. Phrony was quite scornful about
it, but a little perky as well.

"If a boy was such a fool as to go up a tree when he had been told it
wouldn't hold him, she could not help it. She did not want the eggs,
anyhow," she said disdainfully. This was all the reward that little Dave
got for his devotion and courage.

That afternoon Keith went over the Ridge to see Dave.

The Dennison home was a small farm-house back of the Ridge, in what was
known as a "cove," an opening in the angle between the mountains, where
was a piece of level or partly level ground on the banks of one of the
little mountain creeks. When Keith arrived he found Mrs. Dennison, a
small, angular woman with sharp eyes, a thin nose, and thin lips, very
stiff and suspicious. She had never forgiven Keith for his victory over
her boys, and she looked now as if she would gladly have set the dogs on
him instead of calling them off as she did when he strode up the path
and the yelping pack dashed out at him.

She "didn' know how Dave was," she said glumly. "The Doctor said he was
better. She couldn' see no change. Yes, he could go in, she s'posed, if
he wanted to," she said ungraciously.

Keith entered. The boy was lying on a big bed, his head resting against
the frame of the little opening which went for a window, through which
he was peeping wistfully out at the outside world from which he was to
be shut off for so many weary weeks. He returned Keith's greeting in the
half-surly way in which he had always received his advances since the
day of the row; but when Keith sat down on the bed and began to talk to
him cheerily of his daring in climbing where no one else had ventured to
go, he thawed out, and presently, when Keith drifted on to other stories
of daring, he began to be interested, and after a time grew
almost friendly.

He was afraid they might have to cut his leg off. His mother, who always
took a gloomy view of things, had scared him by telling him she thought
it might have to be done; but Keith was able to reassure him. The Doctor
had told him that, while the fracture was very bad, the leg would
be saved.

"If he had