d a clean folded handkerchief,
fine and white. He had done his best to supply her with toilet articles.

Her heart leaped up again at his thoughtfulness. She dashed the water
into her glowing face, and buried it in the clean folds of the
handkerchief--his handkerchief. How wonderful that it should be so! How
had a mere commonplace bit of linen become so invested with the currents
of life as to give such joyful refreshment with a touch? The wonder of
it all was like a miracle. She had not known anything in life could be
like that.

The great red cliff across the valley was touched with the morning sun
when she emerged from her green shelter, shyly conscious of the secret
that lay unrevealed between them.

Their little camp was still in the shadow. The last star had disappeared
as if a hand had turned the lights low with a flash and revealed the
morning.

She stood for an instant in the parting of the cedars, a hand on each
side holding back the boughs, looking forth from her retreat; and the
man advancing saw her and waited with bared head to do her reverence, a
great light of love in his eyes which he knew not was visible, but which
blinded the eyes of the watching girl, and made her cheeks grow rosier.

The very air about them seemed charged with an electrical current. The
little commonplaces which they spoke sank deep into the heart of each
and lingered to bless the future. The glances of their eyes had many
meetings and lingered shyly on more intimate ground than the day before,
yet each had grown more silent. The tenderness of his voice was like a
benediction as he greeted her.

He seated her on the canvas he had arranged freshly beside a bit of
green grass, and prepared to serve her like a queen. Indeed she wore a
queenly bearing, small and slender though she was, her golden hair
shining in the morning, and her eyes bright as the stars that had just
been paled by day.

There were fried rabbits cooking in the tiny saucepan and corn bread was
toasting before the fire on two sharp sticks. She found to her surprise
that she was hungry, and that the breakfast he had prepared seemed a
most delicious feast.

She grew secure in her consciousness that he did not know she had
guessed his secret, and let the joy of it all flow over her and envelop
her. Her laugh rang out musically over the plain, and he watched her
hungrily, delightedly, enjoying every minute of the companionship with
a kind of double joy because of