had dreamed--but that's all she would say. I
figured that being upset by Rutlidge's reminding her of some one she had
known started her mind to going on the past--and then she dreamed of
whatever it was that gave her those scars."

"You have known Miss Willard a long time, haven't you, Brian?" asked
Conrad Lagrange, with the freedom of an old comrade--for men may grow
closer together in one short season in the mountains than in years of
meeting daily in the city.

"I've known her ever since she came into the hills. That was the year
Sibyl was born. All that anybody knows is what has happened since. Sibyl's
mother, even--a month before she died--told me that Myra's history, before
she came to them, was as unknown to her as it was the day she stopped at
their door."

"I can't get over the feeling that I ought to know her--that I have seen
her somewhere, years ago," said the novelist, by way of explaining his
interest.

"Then it was before she got those scars," returned the Ranger. "No one
could ever forget her face as it is now."

"At the same time," commented the artist, "the scars would prevent your
identifying her if she received them after you had known her."

"All the same," said Conrad Lagrange,--as though his mind was bothered by
his inability to establish some incident in his memory,--"I'll place her
yet. Do you mind, Brian, telling us what you _do_ know of her?"

"Why, not at all," returned the officer. "The story is anybody's property.
Its being so well known is probably the reason you didn't hear it when you
were up here before.

"Sibyl's father and mother were here in the mountains when I came. They
lived up there at the old place where Myra and Sibyl are camping now, and
I never expect to meet finer people--either in this world or the next. For
twenty years I knew them intimately. Will Andres was as true and square
and white a man as ever lived and Nelly was just as good a woman as he was
a man. They and my wife and I were more like brothers and sisters than
most folks who are actually blood kin.

"One day, along toward sundown, about a month before Sibyl was born, Nelly
heard the dogs barking and went to see what was up. There stood Myra
Willard at the gate--like she'd dropped out of the sky. Where she came
from God only knows--except that she'd walked from some station on the
railroad over toward the pass. She was just about all in; and, of course,
Nelly had her into the house and was fixing her u