he delightful childlike
and innocent expression of the singer.

Enough that this tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered man arose and, overcome
by a curiosity almost as childlike, slipped into the garden and glided
with an Indian softness of tread toward the voice. The moon shone full
upon the ruined Mission wall tipped with clusters of dark foliage.
Half hiding, half mingling with one of them--an indistinct bulk of
light-colored huddled fleeces like an extravagant bird's nest--hung
the unknown musician. So intent was the performer's preoccupation that
Masterton actually reached the base of the wall immediately below the
figure without attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the
crumbling debris with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little
cry from above. He had barely time to recover his position before the
singer, impulsively leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and fell
outward. But Masterton was tall, alert, and self-possessed, and threw
out his long arms. The next moment they were full of soft flounces,
a struggling figure was against his breast, and a woman's frightened
little hands around his neck. But he had broken her fall, and almost
instantly, yet with infinite gentleness, he released her unharmed, with
hardly her crisp flounces crumpled, in an upright position against
the wall. Even her guitar, still hanging from her shoulder by a yellow
ribbon, had bounded elastic and resounding against the wall, but lay
intact at her satin-slippered feet. She caught it up with another quick
little cry, but this time more of sauciness than fear, and drew her
little hand across its strings, half defiantly.

"I hope you are not hurt?" said the circuit preacher, gravely.

She broke into a laugh so silvery that he thought it no extravagance
to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made audible. She was
lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow and small-waisted like
a pretty wasp. Her complexion in that light was a sheen of pearl satin
that made her eyes blacker and her little mouth redder than any other
color could. She was small, but, remembering the fourteen-year-old
wife of the shopkeeper, he felt that, for all her childish voice and
features, she was a grown woman, and a sudden shyness took hold of him.

But she looked pertly in his face, stood her guitar upright before her,
and put her hands behind her back as she leaned saucily against the wall
and shrugged her shoulders.

"It was the fa