e
just doesn't remember anything that happened from the time he fell down
the steps and slipped that atlas vertebra a little bit on one side."

Again Pros Passmore's fingers sought the back of his collar.

"Looks like somebody has been tryin' to wring my neck, same as a
chicken's," he said meditatively. "But hit feels all right now--all
right--Hoo-ee!" he suddenly broke off to answer to a far, faint hail
from the road below them.

"Pap! Hey--Pap!" The words came up through the clear blue air,
infinitely diminished and attenuated, like some insect cry. The tall man
seemed to guess just what the interruption would be. He turned with a
pettish exclamation.

"Never could go anywhere, nor have any fun, but what some of the
children had to tag," he protested.

"Hoo-ee!" He cupped his hands and sent his voice toward where two men in
a vehicle had halted their horses and were looking anxiously up.
"Well--what is it?"

"Did you get lost? We hired a buggy and came out to find you," the man
below called up.

"Well, if I get lost, I can find myself," muttered the newcomer. He
looked regretfully at the green slopes about him; the lofty, impassive
cliffs where Peace seemed to perch, a visible presence; the great sweeps
of free forest; then at Uncle Pros and Johnnie. And they looked back at
him dubiously.

"I expect I'll have to leave you," he said at last. "I see what it is
those boys want; they're trying to get me back to the railroad in time
for the six-forty train. I'd a heap rather stay here with you, but--" he
glanced from Johnnie and Uncle Pros down to the men in their attitude of
anxious waiting--"I reckon I'll have to go."

He had made the first descending step when Johnnie's hand on his arm
arrested him. Uncle Pros knew not the wonder of his own restoration; but
to the girl this man before her was something more than mortal. Her eyes
went from the lightly tossed hair on his brow to the mud-spattered
boots--was he only a human being? What was the strange power he had over
life and death and the wandering soul of man?

"What--what--aren't you going to tell me your name, and what you are,
before you go?" she entreated him.

He laughed over his shoulder, an enigmatic laugh.

"What was it you did to Uncle Pros?" Her voice was vibrant with the awe
and wonder of what she had seen. "Was it the laying on of hands--as they
tell of it in the Bible?"

"Say, Pap, hurry up, please," wailed up the thin, impatient reminder