g in illimitable
ranks to the horizon, were filled with the immeasurable loneliness of
an ocean shore. In this vast silence I began to think I understood the
taciturnity of the dwellers in the solitary cabin.

When I returned, however, I was surprised to find the tallest girl
standing by the door. As I approached she retreated before me, and
pointing to the corner where a common cot bed had been evidently just
put up, said, "Ye can turn in thar, only ye'll have to rouse out early
when 'Dolphus does the chores," and was turning towards the extension
again, when I stopped her almost appealingly.

"One moment, please. Can I see your mother?"

She stopped and looked at me with a singular expression. Then she said
sharply:--

"You know, fust rate, she's dead."

She was turning away again, but I think she must have seen my concern
in my face, for she hesitated. "But," I said quickly, "I certainly
understood your father, that is, Mr. Johnson," I added, interrogatively,
"to say that--that I was to speak to"--I didn't like to repeat the exact
phrase--"his WIFE."

"I don't know what he was playin' ye for," she said shortly. "Mar has
been dead mor'n a year."

"But," I persisted, "is there no grown-up woman here?"

"No."

"Then who takes care of you and the children?"

"I do."

"Yourself and your father--eh?"

"Dad ain't here two days running, and then on'y to sleep."

"And you take the entire charge of the house?"

"Yes, and the log tallies."

"The log tallies?"

"Yes; keep count and measure the logs that go by the slide."

It flashed upon me that I had passed the slide or declivity on the
hillside, where logs were slipped down into the valley, and I inferred
that Johnson's business was cutting timber for the mill.

"But you're rather young for all this work," I suggested.

"I'm goin' on sixteen," she said gravely.

Indeed, for the matter of that, she might have been any age. Her face,
on which sunburn took the place of complexion, was already hard and set.
But on a nearer view I was struck with the fact that her eyes, which
were not large, were almost indistinguishable from the presence of the
most singular eyelashes I had ever seen. Intensely black, intensely
thick, and even tangled in their profusion, they bristled rather than
fringed her eyelids, obliterating everything but the shining black
pupils beneath, which were like certain lustrous hairy mountain berries.
It was this woodland suggestion that