companionship was no less grateful to Dorothea than her help, for life
in a frontier household in those pioneer days was none too full of
animation and brightness, even for a quiet nature like hers. To Steven
she soon became a companion; and Jacob, the father, yielded no less
quickly and easily to the charms of this strange guest than did mother
and child.

He was a man of earnest piety and of deep insight into human nature. He
had, as Dorothea said, made shrewd guesses at Pepeeta's story before she
told it, and had formed his own theories as to her nature and her
errand.

"I tell thee, Dorothea, she is a lady," were the words in which he had
uttered his conclusions to his wife, in one of their many conversations
about the mysterious stranger.

"What makes thee think so?" she asked.

"Every feature of that delicate face tells its own history. These three
years of contact with David and a different life could never have so
completely wiped out the traces of the vulgar breeding of a gypsy camp
and the low education of a rogue's society, unless there were good blood
in those veins. Mark my word, there is a story about that life that
would stir the heart if it were known."

"No wonder David loved her," said the wife.

"No wonder, indeed. But if it is as it seems, there is a mystery in
their influence on each other that would confound the subtlest student
of life."

"To what does thee refer?"

"Two such natures ought to have made each other better instead of worse
by contact. You can predict what frost and sunlight, water and oil, seed
and soil will do when they meet; but not men and women! Two bads
sometimes make a good, and two goods sometimes make a bad."

"Thee thinks strange thoughts, Jacob, and I do not always follow thee,
but even if it be wrong, I cannot help wishing that our dear David could
have had her for his lawful wife," said Dorothea.

"The tale is not all told yet," responded her husband, opening his book
and beginning to read.

With feelings like these in their hearts, they could not but extend to
Pepeeta that sympathy which alone could soothe the sorrow of her soul.
The sweet atmosphere of this home; the consciousness that she was among
friends; the knowledge that they would do all they could to find the
wanderer whom every one loved with such devotion, gave to Pepeeta's
overwrought feelings an exquisite relief.

Her natural spirits and buoyant nature, repressed so long, began to
reassert