ed his face toward hers by tugging at his long beard, and
kissed him.

Across the tumbled masses of her hair the newcomer's still piercing dark
eyes, blinking a little under their shaggy brows as the fire leaped in
the draft from the open door, caught sight of Donald as he stood back
among the shadows. He straightened up suddenly, and his brows drew
together in a suspicious scowl.

The city man knew enough of the primitive code of the mountain people to
understand that the presence of a man,--especially a strange man,--alone
in the house with a young woman, was fraught with unpleasant
possibilities. But, before he could speak, the child-woman had launched
into a vivacious, if ungrammatical, explanation and story of what had
occurred. In substantiation she now raised her short skirt and lifted
the bandaged foot, with utter freedom from embarrassment, and laughed
deliciously until an answering smile crept slowly into the eyes of the
old mountaineer.

With a simple courtesy, which seemed to hold something of innate
majesty, he stepped forward, and extended a weatherbeaten hand, several
sizes larger than Donald's, and boomed out in a deep voice that matched
his physical proportions, "Yo're suttinly welcome, stranger. What
happened warn't no fault o' yourn, and I'm plumb obleeged ter ye fer
fixin' up my granddarter's hurt. Draw up a cheer fer the stranger,
Smiles, he'll jine us in a bite er supper. The fare's simple, but I war
raised on't, and 'pears ter me thet I top ye some."

"I should say that you did. You make me feel small, and it's not often
any man does that ... physically, I mean."

The two clasped hands, and Donald winced as his own powerful fingers
cracked under the crushing pressure of those of the older man, who
seemed to take a boyish delight in this display of his tremendous
strength.

"What a colossus he is," thought Donald, as he gritted his teeth to keep
back the involuntary exclamation of pain, for, although the massive
shoulders and Jovian head of the mountaineer were stooped forward, he
towered fully three inches above the six foot city athlete, and his
iron-gray beard, rusted with tobacco juice about his mouth, swept over
his chest almost to his waist.

"Thanks for the invitation," he said aloud, as he covertly nursed his
right hand. "It's mighty kind of you, but I don't want to impose longer,
and, besides, I'd better start back to Fayville before it gets dark
altogether. If you'll just tell me