was a chance for me to help things on the Tomah after I learned
something about engineering. I was doing my best, that's all, and the
liars saw their opening and took it. If you hear the stories I hope you
won't believe them."

Hastily she looked away from his earnest and imploring eyes and gave her
attention to the turbid freshet flood, shredded into a yellow and
yeasty riot of waters.

Her recollection of childhood became clearer now that she was back
beside the cataract which was linked with all her early memories. He did
not venture to disturb her with more talk.

She remained there until the chill from the air and the mist from the
falling waters and the growing dusk warned her.

They were back at the edge of the village street before he spoke again.
"The falls are pretty wild now; they're beautiful in the summer when the
water is low. When I was a boy I footed it over here from the Tomah a
few times and sat in that niche and listened to the song the waters
seemed to sing. It was worth the long hike. Being there just now brought
back something I'd almost forgotten. One day the waters sung me to sleep
and when I woke up there was a little girl dancing in front of me and
pointing her finger, and I looked at myself and saw she had made a chain
of daisies and hung it around my neck and had stuck clover blooms all
over me. And when she saw that I was awake she scampered off with some
other children. Queer how the funny little thoughts like that pop up in
a person's mind!"

Fresh from the scene, softened by her ponderings, Lida felt the surge of
an impulse to tell him that the same memory had come to her while she
sat in the niche. She was the child who had made the daisy chain--who
had been bolder than the other children in approaching the sleeping
stranger. And she was not ready to agree with him that the memory was
"queer." She wished she could confess her identity to him right then,
because the confession would enable her to bring up a topic which had
been interesting her very much--how personalities, meeting as strangers,
often prompt each other through subtle psychic qualities of past
association; there were instances in the books she had read where
persons claimed to have recognized each other from past incarnations;
but Lida did not believe that stuff, she had told herself. As to the
mutual remembrance of the daisy chain--that was different--it seemed
quite natural. She could remember just how comically that