nodded.

"Let's sit by the fire!" she suddenly said. "I--I want to tell
you--something, and then I must go."

The lack of shyness and reserve might so easily have become
boldness--but they did not! The girl was like a creature of the wilds
which, knowing no reason for fear, was revelling in heretofore
unsuspected enjoyment. Truedale pulled the couch to the hearth for
Nella-Rose, piled the pillows on one end and then seated himself on the
stump of a tree which served as a settee.

"Now, then!" he said, keeping his eyes on his breezy little guest.
"What have you got to tell me--before you go?"

"It's something that happened--long ago. You will not laugh if I tell
you? You laugh right much."

"I? You think I laugh a good deal? Good Lord! Some folk think I don't
laugh enough." He had his friends back home in mind, and somehow the
memory steadied him for an instant.

"P'r'aps they-all don't know you as well as I do." This with amusing
conviction.

"Perhaps they don't." Truedale was deadly solemn. "But go on,
Nella-Rose. I promise not to laugh now."

"It was the beginning of--you!" The girl turned her eyes to the
fire--she was quaintly demure. "At first when I saw you looking in that
window, yonder, I was right scared."

Jim White's statement that Nella-Rose wasn't more than half real seemed,
in the light of present happenings, little less than bald fact.

"It was the way _you_ looked--way back there when I was ten years old. I
had run away--"

"Are you always running away?" asked Truedale from the hollow depths of
unreality.

"I run away a smart lot. You have to if you want to--see things and be
different."

"And you--you want to be different, Nella-Rose?"

"I--why, can't you see?--I _am_ different."

"Of course. I only meant--do you like to be different."

"I have to like it. I was born with a cawl."

"In heaven's name, what's that?"

"Something over your eyes, and when they take it off you see more, and
farther, than any one else. You're part ha'nt."

Truedale wiped his forehead--the room was getting hot, but the heat
alone was not responsible for his emotions; he was being carried beyond
his depth--beyond himself--by the wild fascination of the little
creature before him. He would hardly have been surprised had a draught
of air wafted her out of the window like a bit of mountain mist.

"But you mustn't interrupt so much!" She turned a stern face upon him.
"I ran away that time to see a--railroa