nshine, fell, unbound, over her shoulders, and partly veiled a
childlike face, tanned to an Indian brown and now twisted with pain, but
nevertheless so startlingly sweet and appealing that the man gasped in
astonishment.

[Illustration: "ONE DUSTY, BUT DAINTY, FOOT WAS HELD BETWEEN HER
HANDS"]

As it is with many who wear bluntness like a cloak, Donald possessed a
deep-seated appreciation of the beautiful, without being capable of
expressing it. But now he vaguely realized that here, where he would
last have looked for it, he had blundered upon a child whom Mother
Nature had designed lovingly and with painstaking care, perhaps in order
to satisfy herself that, in the bustle of creation which nowadays left
her little time for attention to fine detail, her hands had not wholly
lost the cunning which was theirs when the world was young and women
were few and fair.

Her face had the qualities of a sweet wild-flower, delicate of form yet
hardy enough to stand up under the stress of a storm. A critic might
have declared the sensitive mouth a shade too broad for the tapering
lines which formed the firmly rounded chin; he might have said that the
upper lip, against which its companion was now tightly pressed to check
its trembling, was too short for classic beauty; but he would hardly
have been able to find a flaw in the molding of the straight, slender
nose or the broad forehead, or the cheeks which curved as symmetrically
as the petals of a damask rose, or--if he were human--with the faint
shadows at the corners of the lips which were not dimples, but
fascinatingly suggested them. But, above all, it was the child's eyes,
heavy with a sudden rush of unshed tears that merely added to their
appealing charm, which left the strongest impression on the man. They
were remarkable eyes, long of lash and of a deep blue with limpid
purple shadows and golden highlights.

Her form, untrammelled by confining clothing and bending naturally, was
slender and lithesome, but full of curves which told that the bud of
childhood was just beginning to open into the blossom of early
maturity--about fifteen or sixteen years old, Donald guessed her to be.

At her feet lay an overturned kettle the contents from which, a simple
stew, was sending up a cloud of steam from the rough floor, and
explained the reason for the misty eyes and tenderly nursed ankle.

The whole picture was graven on his mind in a single glance; but, the
next instant the sun