es a Heartache and Black Jack Drops Out

XV Wherein Freckles and the Angel Try Taking a Picture, and Little
Chicken Furnishes the Subject

XVI Wherein the Angel Locates a Rare Tree and Dines with the Gang

XVII Wherein Freckles Offers His Life for His Love and Gets a Broken
Body

XVIII Wherein Freckles Refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable
Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it

XIX Wherein Freckles Finds His Birthright and the Angel Loses Her Heart

XX Wherein Freckles Returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More Sails for
Ireland Without Him

CHAPTER I

Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the
Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he
was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to belong somewhere and
to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food and
clothing.

Long before he came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber
Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing of the
horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food. A feeling
of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave. Without
stopping to think, he turned into the newly made road and followed it to
the camp, where the gang was making ready for supper and bed.

The scene was intensely attractive. The thickness of the swamp made a
dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees.
The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired
horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in deep content,
the grain given them. Duncan, the brawny Scotch head-teamster, lovingly
wiped the flanks of his big bays with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he
softly whistled, "O wha will be my dearie, O!" and a cricket beneath
the leaves at his feet accompanied him. The green wood fire hissed and
crackled merrily. Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big
black kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his
testing-fork, gusts of savory odors escaped.

Freckles approached him.

"I want to speak with the Boss," he said.

The cook glanced at him and answered carelessly: "He can't use you."

The color flooded Freckles' face, but he said simply: "If you will be
having the goodness to point him out, we will give him a chance to do
his own talking."

With a shrug of astonishment, the