e corn-field, and finally vanished into a hole in a half-dead
pine that stood near the clearing, putting out its head once more with
a last outpouring of abuse. "Oh! little fellow," said Dick, "I am
afraid your nuts will be wasted, for to-morrow we chop the tree down.
But I 've promised Stephanie that first I 'll climb up and poke you out
with a stick--and get bitten for my pains, I suppose, you little
spitfire. So you need not be afraid you 'll be killed." He ran a hand
over the smooth bark, blue-black, mottled with fragile green lichens,
with no thought of its beauty. "Half rotten," he said to himself, "and
it ought to go down as easily as a bulrush." And he turned away, his
mind full of the fascinating way in which the bright blades of the axes
would bite deep through that beautiful dark bark into the
sweet-smelling white wood beneath; of how the chips would scatter and
fly, and lie like creamy shreds of ivory underfoot; of the tremor that
would seem to shake the neighbouring woods at the sound of the falling
of the tree.

CHAPTER II.

The Fall of the Tree.

Next morning the year had grown perceptibly older; or so it seemed to
Stephanie, as she stood in the doorway of the log-cabin, looking across
the misty clearing to the golden forests that encircled it. The fallen
leaves looked browner, each furred at the edge with a delicate fringe
of hoar-frost; and the newly risen sun strove as yet in vain to send
some heat through the faint, cold haze. It was more penetratingly
chill than if it had been the drier winter time. Stephanie snuggled
into her little gray shawl with a keen appreciation of its rough
warmth, and watched her breath floating as tiny silver clouds in the
almost motionless air.

She was a tall, strong girl, with an unexpectedly plaintive face--a
quaint, dark-eyed face which suited well with her quaint foreign name.
Already she looked older than Dick, for her eyes were grave, and her
mouth had taken a firm, responsible curve; it was a look which comes
sometimes to motherless girls who have men-folk to manage and care for.

The room behind her was neat and clean, but almost bare of even such
comforts as might have been found in pioneer homes. Here and there
some little stool or shelf showed that her brother's deft fingers had
been at work; but in this as in most things he lacked the steadiness of
application which would have served to better their lot. And Captain
Underwood was a broken