te. Ah! the girl was going to sleep! and he would fish again!

Very slowly and cautiously, lest he should awaken her, he crept forward
through the bushes, out upon the bank where the smooth grass made
creeping easier, inch by inch forward till he had come face to face
with her. Then a sudden grasp at the rod in her hand and she awoke,
sprang to her feet, beheld him, and in her fear leaped backward,
unheeding where she set her foot. It had chanced to be upon a loose rock
which rolled downwards with her, and she felt herself falling into the
stream.

But she did not reach the water. Her skirts were clasped firmly and
herself dragged backward, to be dropped upon the ground with more force
than needful. It was all done in a second or two of time, but it
sufficed to show her that she had escaped one peril but to encounter
another. The man who had pulled her from the river, the man who sat now
close beside her, was Marsden's much discussed--tramp!

For a moment her heart almost stopped beating, and she turned her eyes
with a hopeless glance across the fields by which she had come. Oh, how
wide they were and how desolate! All their glorious beauty faded from
her vision till they seemed but an endless waste between her and safety.
Oh, if she had only gone by the straight and longer road, instead of
yielding to a whim she had not dared to speak of to Susanna! If she
hadn't stopped to fish she would already have been at the Mansion, which
now it seemed she would never see again. A tramp. It was the one thing
in the world of which she had the greatest fear, and the behavior of
Widow Sprigg, as well as the other villagers, had convinced her that
here was a tramp of the worst variety.

Then her sense of what was "fair" made her force her eyes toward her
unwished-for companion. To her surprise he was not paying the slightest
attention to her, and he didn't look so--well, not so fearfully wicked.
He certainly was clothed in the poorest and dirtiest of rags. His bare
feet showed through the holes in his shoes. His hat had a brim but
half-way around. His hair had not seen a comb for so long that he must
have forgotten what a comb was like. His face was roughly bearded, but
it was very pale and not so dirty as his hands. His eyebrows stood out
at an angle above his wild eyes, and were the bushiest she had ever
seen, except Squire Pettijohn's. He wasn't a bit like that sleek and
portly gentleman, yet, even as he had done in Alfaretta's