by! you're gettin' to be a right smart-lookin' gal. Seems to
agree with ye up here," said Hoskins with an awkward laugh. "Darned ef
ye ain't lookin' awful purty!"

"G'long!" said Liberty Jones, more than ever convinced of his badinage.

"Fact," said Hoskins energetically. "Why, Doc would tell ye so, too. See
ef he don't!"

At this Liberty Jones felt her face grow hot. "You jess get!" she said,
turning away in as much embarrassment as anger. Yet he hovered near
her with awkward attentions that pleased while it still angered her.
He offered to go with her to look up the cows; she flatly declined, yet
with a strange satisfaction in his evident embarrassment. This may have
lent some animation to her face, for he drew a long breath and said:--

"Don't go pertendin' ye don't know yer purty. Say, let me and you walk
a bit and have a talk together." But Libby had another idea in her mind
and curtly dismissed him. Then she ran swiftly to the spring, for the
words "The Doc will tell ye so, too" were ringing in her ears. The
doctor who came with the two beautifully dressed women! HE--would tell
her she was pretty! She had not dared to look at herself in that crystal
mirror since that dreadful day two months ago. She would now.

It was a pretty place in the cool shade of the giant trees, and the
hoof-marks of cattle drinking from the run beneath the pool had not
disturbed the margin of that tranquil sylvan basin. For a moment she
stood tremulous and uncertain, and then going up to the shining mirror,
dropped on her knees before it with her thin red hands clasped on her
lap. Unconsciously she had taken the attitude of prayer; perhaps there
was something like it in her mind.

And then the light glanced full on the figure that she saw there!

It fell on a full oval face and throat guileless of fleck or stain,
smooth as a child's and glowing with health; on large dark eyes, no
longer sunk in their orbits, but filled with an eager, happy light; on
bared arms now shapely in contour and cushioned with firm flesh; on a
dazzling smile, the like of which had never been on the face of Liberty
Jones before!

She rose to her feet, and yet lingered as if loath to part from this
delightful vision. Then a fear overcame her that it was some trick of
the water, and she sped swiftly back to the house to consult the little
mirror which hung in her sleeping-room, but which she had never glanced
at since the momentous day of the spring. She took