d her new friend softly, almost absently, "it didn't do any
good to trephine--but it might have done a lot of harm. I'd like to see
the back of your uncle's neck. I ain't in any hurry to get to that
banquet at Atlanta--a man can always overeat and make himself sick,
without going so far to do it."

So, like an idle schoolboy, the unknown forsook his own course, turning
from the road when Johnnie turned, and went with her up the steep, rocky
gulch where the door of a deserted cabin flung to and fro on its
hinges. At sight of the smokeless chimney, the gaping doorway and empty,
inhospitable interior, Johnnie looked blank.

"Have you got anything to eat?" she asked her companion, hesitatingly.
"I came off in such a hurry that I forgot all about it. Some people that
I know used to live in that cabin, and I hoped to get my dinner there
and ask after my uncle; but I see they have moved."

"Sit right down here," said the stranger, indicating the broad
door-stone, around which the grass grew tall. "We'll soon make that all
right." He sought in the pockets of the coat he carried slung across his
shoulder and brought out a packet of food. "I laid in some fuel when I
thought I might get the chance to run my own engine across the
mountains," he told the girl, opening his bundle and dividing evenly. He
uttered a few musical words in an unknown tongue.

"That's Indian," he commented carelessly, without looking at her. "It
means you're to eat your dinner. I was with the Shawnees when I was a
boy. I learned a lot of their language, and I'll never forget it. They
taught me more things than talk."

Johnnie studied the man beside her as they ate their bit of lunch.

"My name is Johnnie Consadine, sir," she told him. "What shall I call
you?"

Thus directly questioned, the unknown smiled quizzically, his hazel eyes
crinkling at the corners and overflowing with good humour.

"Well, you might say 'Pap,'" he observed consideringly, "Lots of boys
and girls do call me Pap--more than a thousand of 'em, now, I guess. And
I'm eighty--mighty near old enough to have a girl of nineteen."

She looked at him in astonishment. Eighty years old, as lithe as a lad,
and with a lad's clear, laughing eye! Yet there was a look of power, of
that knowledge which is power, in his face that made her say to him:

"Do you think that Uncle Pros can ever be cured--have his right mind
back again, I mean? Of course, the cut on his head is healed up
long ago."