pt on a couch in the living room, while Ben and Percy had not
returned from their search for news of her father.

"Miss Billie," remarked the doctor, "if you will be kind enough to fix
me up a lunch, I think I'll pack my knapsack and start on the road
again. I can't say how long I shall be gone, but you mustn't be uneasy
if I don't get back for a day or two. The boys will look after you and
if you have any real trouble, you had better telegraph your father. If
possible, try and keep Phoebe right here. Those men will go no further
than threats in regard to us. They know we are too powerful for them,
but I couldn't say the same for that poor girl and her father. I suppose
jealousy and Lupo's treachery are the motives behind it. The father does
better work than any of them can do and the mountaineers resent the
difference between them, whatever it is, birth, breeding, education. But
we can't judge them by the usual standards, of course. They have never
had any chances, these people, shut in by this wall of mountains. There
is not much inspiration to be charitable and kind, living in one of
these little shanties during the long cold winters. It's a pretty fine
nature that doesn't get warped and narrowed by the life."

"Phoebe's didn't," thought Billie, while she sliced bread for the
doctor's lunch.

After he had departed with his staff and his telescope and his knapsack,
Billie sat down in a steamer chair under the trees and began to think.
She lifted her eyes to the wall of mountains now mystical and unreal
under their mantle of blue shadow. How could treachery and hatred and
jealousy exist where there was so much beauty? It seemed to her that she
had only to look about her to be inspired and uplifted; but Billie was
too young to realize that it takes more than scenery to furnish that
kind of inspiration.

"I am not tired and I am not sleepy," she thought. "Must I sit here all
the afternoon waiting for the others to wake?" She glanced at her
watch. "Only a quarter to three. Why can't I take a walk? It's against
the rules as laid down by papa for women members, but that was only a
joke anyhow and I shan't go far."

Billie chose a trail they often took after supper for the reason that it
was brought to an early finish by the bed of a creek dry in summer,
though probably a brave stream in the spring after the thaws. But it was
a pretty walk, tunneled through the forest, carpeted with dried pine
needles and bordered on ei