ted
his hat and backed away.

As they drove away the girl said, "Thank you" and "Good-by," very
sweetly.

"Who is he, Alice? What is he?" asked her mother.

"I don't know. Mr. Keith. He is a gentleman."

As Gordon stood by the roadside and saw the carriage disappear in a haze
of dust, he was oppressed with a curious sense of loneliness. The
isolation of his position seemed to strike him all on a sudden. That
stout, full-voiced woman, with her rich clothes, had interposed between
him and the rest of his kind. She had treated him condescendingly. He
would show her some day who he was. But her daughter! He went off into
a revery.

He turned, and made his way slowly and musingly in the direction of his
home.

A new force had suddenly come into his life, a new land had opened
before him. One young girl had effected it. His school suddenly became a
prison. His field was the world.

As he passed along, scarcely conscious of where he was, he met the very
man of all others he would rather have met--Dr. Balsam. He instantly
informed the Doctor of the accident, and suggested that he had better
hurry on to the Springs.

"A pretty girl, with blue eyes and brown hair?" inquired the Doctor.

"Yes." The color stole into Gordon's cheeks.

"With a silly woman for a mother, who is always talking about her heart
and pats you on the back?"

"I don't know. Yes, I think so."

"I know her. Is the limb broken?" he asked with interest.

"No, I do not think it is; but badly sprained. She fainted from the
pain, I think."

"You say it occurred up on the Ridge?"

"Yes, near the big pines--at the summit."

"Why, how did she get down? There is no road." He was gazing up at the
pine-clad spur above them.

"I helped her down." A little color flushed into his face.

"Ah! You supported her? She can walk on it?"

"Ur--no. I brought her down. I had to bring her. She could not walk--not
a step."

"Oh! ah! I see. I'll hurry on and see how she is."

As he rode off he gave a grunt.

"Humph!" It might have meant any one of several things. Perhaps, what it
did mean was that "Youth is the same the world over, and here is a
chance for this boy to make a fool of himself and he will probably do
it, as I did." As the Doctor jogged on over the rocky road, his brow was
knit in deep reflection; but his thoughts were far away among other
pines on the Piscataqua. That boy's face had turned the dial back nearly
forty years.

CHAPTER VII