ile broke over her face--her mood changing as quickly as the sunlight
breaks through a cloud. "I know you are not"--she said--"a _bad_ man
wouldn't have wanted to paint this place as you have painted it."

She turned to go.

"But wait!" he cried, "you haven't told me--will you teach me to know your
mountains as you know them?"

"I'm sure I cannot say," she answered smiling, as she moved away.

"But at least, we will meet again," he urged.

She laughed gaily, "Why not? The mountains are for you as well as for me;
and though the hills _are_ so big, the trails are narrow, and the passes
very few."

With another laugh, she slipped away--her brown dress, that, in the shifty
lights under the thick foliage, so harmonized with the colors of bush and
vine and tree and rock, being so quickly lost to the artist's eye that she
seemed almost to vanish into the scene before him.

But presently, from beyond the willow wall, he heard her voice
again--singing to the accompaniment of the mountain stream. Softly, the
melody died away in the distance--losing itself, at last, in the deeper
organ-tones of the mountain waters.

For some minutes, the artist stood listening--thinking he heard it still.

Aaron King did not, that night, tell Conrad Lagrange of his adventure in
the spring glade.

Chapter XVII

Confessions in the Spring Glade

All the next day, while he worked upon his picture in the glade, Aaron
King listened for that voice in the organ-like music of the distant
waters. Many times, he turned to search the flickering light and shade of
the undergrowth, behind him, for a glimpse of the girl's brown dress and
winsome face.

The next day she came.

The artist had been looking long at a splash of sunlight that fell upon
the gray granite boulder which was set in the green turf, and had turned
to his canvas for--it seemed to him--only an instant. When he looked again
at the boulder, she was standing there--had, apparently, been standing
there for some time, waiting with smiling lips and laughing eyes for him
to see her.

A light creel hung by its webbed strap from her shoulder; in her hand, she
carried a slender fly rod of good workmanship. Dressed in soft brown, with
short skirts and high laced boots, and her wavy hair tucked under a wide,
felt hat; with her blue eyes shining with fun, and her warmly tinted skin
glowing with healthful exercise; she appeared--to the artist--more as some
mythical spirit of the