* *

Speaking of Phil's graduation, it should be mentioned that she had
contributed a ten-minute oration to the commencement exercises, its
subject being "The Dogs of Main Street." This was not conceded a place
on the programme without a struggle. The topic was frivolous and without
precedent; moreover, it was unliterary--a heinous offense, difficult of
condonation. To admit the dogs of Main Street to a high-school
commencement, an affair of pomp and ceremony held in Hastings's Theater,
was not less than shocking. It had seemed so to the principal, but he
knew Phil; and knowing Phil he laughed when the English teacher
protested that it would compromise her professional dignity to allow a
student to discuss the vagrant canines of Main Street in a commencement
essay. She had expected Phil to prepare a thesis on "What the Poets Have
Meant to Me," and for this "The Dogs of Main Street" was no proper
substitute. The superintendent of schools, scanning the programme before
it went to the printer, shuddered; but it was not for naught that Phil's
"people" were of Montgomery's elect.

Phil was, in fact, _a_ Montgomery. Her great-grandfather, Amzi
Montgomery, observing the unpopulous Hoosier landscape with a shrewd
eye, had, in the year of grace 1829, opened a general store on the exact
spot now occupied by Montgomery's Bank, and the proper authorities a few
years later called the name of the place Montgomery, which it remains to
this day. This explains why the superintendent of schools overlooked the
temerity of Amzi's great-granddaughter in electing the Main Street fauna
as the subject of her commencement address rather than her indebtedness
to the poets, though it may not be illuminative as to the holes in
Phil's stockings. But on this point we shall be enlightened later.

Phil raised her head. There had come a lull in the whisper of the
weather spirit in the sycamores, and she was aware of a sound that was
not the noise of the creek among the boulders. It was a strain of music
not of nature's making and Phil's healthy young curiosity was instantly
aroused by it. Her father maintained his lonely vigil by the fire, quite
oblivious of her and of all things. She caught another strain, and then
began climbing the cliff.

The ascent was difficult, but she drew herself up swiftly, catching at
bushes, seeking with accustomed feet the secure limestone ledges that
promised safety, pausing to listen when bits of loosened st