open space we came, and around across the
railroad tracks. In and out among grimy freight cars we sped. I would
not stop.

"Christ!" I thought in terror. "Suppose Sam and the gang come around
this way!" I had not seen them now for years. What might not they do to
her?

But she made me stop by my father's dock. She was gasping and her face
was red, but with her hand like a little vise on mine she stood there
staring at the ship.

"Where are the heathen?" she asked at last, in a queer choking voice.

"There." I pointed to a small brown man with a white skull-cap on his
head. "There's one. See him? Now come home!"

"Wait a minute, please," she begged very softly. A moment longer she
stared at him. "All right, now we'll go," she said.

When I got her safe inside my gate I was in a cold sweat. This
adventure, to my surprise, had been one of the most thrilling of all.
And who'd have thought _her_ an adventurer?

Her mother died that summer while we were up in the mountains, and when
we came back we found the house empty. Her father had taken her out
West.

I remember being distinctly relieved when I heard that she had gone
away. For now there was something uncanny about her. It was one thing to
have a mother "at death's door." That had been quite exciting. But to
have one dead! There was something too awful about it. I would not have
known what to say to the girl. And, besides, the thought suddenly
entered my mind--suppose my own mother were to die!

* * * * *

We had been splendid chums, my mother and I, that long delightful summer
up in the White Mountains. The mountains, we had decided together, were
our favorite place to live in. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the
hills," was the part of the Bible which she liked best. She loved these
hills for their quiet, I loved them for the exciting adventures I had
with Sue and "Stouty," the son of the farmer with whom we stayed. But
these adventures were of a kind that my mother warmly approved of for
me. They were not like those on the harbor.

An adventure to climb with Stouty and Sue up through the resinous
branches of an enormous pine on the mountainside to the hawk's nest in
the bare top branches, snatch the eggs and smash them, while Stouty with
a big thick stick would beat off the mother hawk. An adventure to
clamber half the day up a bouldery path through firs and birches,
looking into black caves, peeping over steep cliffs, and a