eastward. There she had asked him
to help her up to the top of the rock, but he had refused. He told her
that she had walked already too far, and he would not permit her
to climb it.

"Not permit me! Well, I like that!" she said, with a flash of her blue
eyes; and springing from her seat on the brown carpet, before he could
interpose, she was climbing up the high rock as nimbly as if she were
a boy.

He called to her to stop, but she took no heed. He began to entreat her,
but she made no answer. He was in terror lest she might fall, and
sprang after her to catch her; but up, up she climbed, with as steady a
foot and as sure an eye as he could have shown himself, until she
reached the top, when, looking down on him with dancing eyes, she kissed
her hand in triumph and then turned away, her cheeks aglow. When he
reached the top, she was standing on the very edge of the precipice,
looking far over the long reach of sloping country to the blue line of
the horizon. Keith almost gasped at her temerity. He pleaded with her
not to be so venturesome.

"Please stand farther back, I beg you," he said as he reached her side.

"Now, that is better," she said, with a little nod to him, her blue eyes
full of triumph, and she seated herself quietly on the rock.

Keith began to scold her, but she laughed at him.

He had done it often, she said, and what he could do she could do.

The beauty of the wide landscape sank into both their minds, and after a
little they both took a graver tone.

"Tell me where your old home is," she said presently, after a long pause
in which her face had grown thoughtful. "You told me once that you could
see it from this rock."

Keith pointed to a spot on the far horizon. He did not know that it was
to see this even more than to brave him that she had climbed to the top
of the rock.

"Now tell me about it," she said. "Tell me all over what you have told
me before." And Keith related all he could remember. Touched with her
sympathy, he told it with more feeling than he had ever shown before.
When he spoke of the loss of his home, of his mortification, and of his
father's quiet dignity, she turned her face away to keep him from seeing
the tears that were in her eyes.

"I can understand your feeling a little," she said presently; "but I did
not know that any one could have so much feeling for a plantation. I
suppose it is because it is in the country, with its trees and flowers
and little streams.