he must start back to the duller realities of home.
She had been interrupted by no break in the silence except the little
forest twitter of birds and now and then the cool splash where a bass
leaped in the lake.

But as she made her way along the twisting road she heard the rattle of
wheels on the rocks and turned to see a vehicle driven by a man who
obviously had no kinship with stony farms or lumber camps. She paused,
and the buggy came up. Its driver drew his horse down, and in a
singularly pleasing and friendly voice inquired:

"Can you tell me, little sister, how I can get to Middle Fork?"

Middle Fork was the village at the end of the six-mile mountain descent,
and Mary, who knew every trail and woodland path, told him, not only of
the road, but of a passable short-cut.

The girl had come to judge human faces through the eyes of her own
circumstance, and those of the men and women about her wore for the most
part the resignation of surrender and hardship, but this man's face was
different. He was a man to her eleven years, though a more experienced
eye would have seen that he was hardly more than a prematurely old boy.
Lines traced a network around his eyes, but they were whimsical lines
such as come from persistent laughter--the sort of laughter that insists
on expressing itself even in the face of misfortune. His open mackinaw
collar revealed a carelessly knotted scarf decorated with a large black
pearl, and as he drew off a glove she noticed that his brown hand was
slender and that one finger wore a heavily carved ring, from whose
quaint setting glowed the cool, bright light of an emerald. Her frank
curiosity showed so plainly in her face that the fine wrinkles about the
young man's eyes became little radiants of amusement centering around
gray pupils and his lips parted in a smile over very even teeth.

There are a few men in the world whom we feel that we have always known,
when once we have seen them, and upon whom we find ourselves bestowing
confidences as soon as we have said, "Good-day." Perhaps they are the
isolated survivors of knight-errant days, whose business it is to
listen to the troubles of others.

It was only the matter of minutes before Mary was chatting artlessly
with this traveler of the mountain road, and since she was a child she
was talking of herself, while he nodded gravely and listened with a
deference of attention that was to her new and disarmingly charming.

He, too, was just