through the under-brush with unseeing eyes,
and unhearing ears, but it was not long until they had learned the
alertness of young Indians, following by signs of bark and leaf and
fallen feather, trails more interesting than any detective story.

Gradually the old professor, aroused to the fact that they were valuable
assistants, began to take some notice of them. They awakened memories of
his own barefooted boyhood, and sometimes when he had had a particularly
successful morning, he threw off his habitual abstraction, and as Mary
reported to Jack, was "as human as anybody."

It seemed, too, that at these times he saw Mary in a new light; saw her
as the boys did, fearless as one of themselves, tireless as a squaw, and
a happy-go-lucky comrade who could turn the most ordinary occasion into
a jolly outing. Her knack of inventing substitutes when he had left some
necessary article at home filled him with mild wonder. He came to
believe that her resources were unlimited;

One morning, early in September, he forgot his memorandum book and
pencil, and did not discover the fact until he was ready to note some
measurements which he could not trust to memory. It was no matter, she
assured him cheerfully, as he stood peering helplessly around over his
spectacles and slapping his pockets in vain.

"You know Lysander says, 'Where the lion's skin will not reach it must
be pieced with the fox's,' I'll find some kind of a substitute for your
pencil, somewhere."

After a few moments' absence she came up the hill again with some broad
sycamore leaves which she laid on a flat rock. "There!" she exclaimed.
"You dictate, and I'll write on these leaves with a hair-pin. Hazel Lee
and I used to write notes on them by the hour, playing post-office back
at the Wigwam."

Several times during the dictation he looked at her as if about to make
some personal remark, then changed his mind. What he had to say needed
more explanation than he felt equal to making, and he decided to send
Mrs. Levering as his spokesman. Being a relative, she understood the
situation he wanted to make plain, and he felt she could deal with the
subject better than he. So that afternoon, Mrs. Levering came over on
his errand. Mrs. Ware and Mary were sewing, and she plunged at once
into her story.

Professor Carnes had been left the guardian of a fifteen-year-old niece,
who was born into the world with a delicate constitution, an unhappy
disposition and the proverbial