r to a cheery rose pink, with the excitement, the pressing
adventure of trailing firewood among the rocks and dragging it captive
to the new-born blaze which Pem was fanning with her breath and with the
breezy bellows of her short green skirt.

As for the sufferer, hope stirred anew in him as he turned his head
towards the flaming pennons of good cheer, while the fire, prospering
gayly, feathered its nest with scarlet down.

He saw, too, that the fire-witch was preparing something in that red
nest for him.

Raking out the first glowing embers, she filled her little aluminum cup
at the rill and set it among them; when it steamed she shook into it a
few drops from the little vial--the aromatic spirits of ammonia--and
held it to his lips.

"It's the best I can do," she murmured, but her eyes stretched that best
into an indefinite blue of longing to capture the pain even for a short
time and bear it for him--for him who was making the Thunder Bird's
fortune.

As before, the stimulant set the racked heart to sending strength
through the freezing veins--and with it a touch of the whimsicality
which Death alone could quench.

"Little girl!" Treffrey Graham's eye winked upon a mote of fun that
softened to a mist. "Your fa-ther's invention is the gr-reatest thing
yet; it's a Success--I know that from the one glimpse I had at the
record--" Pemrose winced--"but--but you may tell him from me that I
doubt if, after all, his Thunder Bird is the best thing he's turned
out."

"Some-somebody coming! Oh-h, some-body--coming!" cried Una, at that
moment, so that the man started up, with a heyday exclamation--and
tumbled back, a wreck of groans.

For it was not his son. Neither was it the long-coated figure of the
chauffeur, at sight of which each girl would have passionately hugged
herself--if not him.

But it was a messenger whom Andrew had sent.

And at sight of her, of the fresh mountain rose in her cheeks, with its
heart of American gold, the climbing flash in her hazel eye, Una just
tumbled into sobs, herself, that little fixed star in her eye blazing
pathetic welcome, for this was her first taste of emergency's pinch,
emergency's call for sacrifice.

"Are you--oh! are you come to stay with us--us?" she cried, running
forward with childish confidence.

"That I be--girlie!" responded the mountain woman, throwing a warm arm
around her. "The man that borrowed our little aut'mobile truck and set
off in it at a score down