daylight has not been long enough for.
A flag basket at her feet holds strips and rolls of delicate birch-bark,
carefully split into filmy thinness, and heaps of star-mosses,
cup-mosses, and those thick and crisp with clustering brown spires, as
well as sheets of lichen silvery and pale green; and on the lap-board
across her knees lies her work,--a graceful cross in perspective, put
on card-board in birch shaded from faint buff to bistre, dashed with the
detached lines that seem to have quilted the tree-teguments together.
Around the foot of the cross rises a mound of lovely moss-work in
relief, with feathery filaments creeping up and wreathing about the
shaft and thwart-beam. Miss Craydocke is just dotting in some bits of
slender coral-headed stems among little brown mushrooms and chalices, as
there comes a sudden, imperative knocking at the door of communication,
or defense, between her and Sin Saxon.

"You must just open this time, if you please! I've got my arms full, and
I couldn't come round."

Miss Craydocke slipped her lap-board--work and all--under her bureau,
upon the floor, for safety; and then with her quaint, queer expression,
in which curiosity, pluckiness, and a foretaste of amusement mingled so
as to drive out annoyance, pushed back her bolt, and presented herself
to the demand of her visitor, much as an undaunted man might fling open
his door at the call of a mob.

Sin Saxon stood there, in the light of the good lady's candle, making a
pretty picture against the dim background of the unlighted room beyond.
Her fair hair was tossed, and her cheeks flushed; her blue eyes bright
with sauciness and fun. In her hands, or across her arms, rather, she
held some huge, uncouth thing, that was not to the last degree
dainty-smelling, either; something conglomerated rudely upon a great
crooked log or branch, which, glanced at closer, proved to be a fragment
of gray old pine. Sticks and roots and bark, straw and grass and locks
of dirty sheep's-wool, made up its bulk and its untidiness; and this
thing Sin held out with glee, declaring she had brought a real treasure
to add to Miss Craydocke's collection.

"Such a chance!" she said, coming in. "One mightn't have another in a
dozen years. I have just given Jimmy Wigley a quarter for it, and he'd
just all but broken his neck to get it. It's a real crow's nest.
Corvinus something-else-us, I suppose. Where will you have it? I'm going
to nail it up for you myself. Won