f her. He calculated
a grip, and not a strong one, that could grind her little fingers to
pulp. He thought of fist-blows he had given to men's heads, and
received on his own head, and felt that the least of them could shatter
hers like an eggshell. He scanned her little shoulders and slim waist,
and knew in all certitude that with his two hands he could rend her to
pieces.

"Wasn't I one?" she insisted again.

He came back to himself with a shock--or away from himself, as the case
happened. He was loth that the conversation should cease.

"What?" he answered. "Oh, yes; you bet you was a Samaritan, even if you
didn't have no olive oil." He remembered what his mind had been dwelling
on, and asked, "But ain't you afraid?"

She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

"Of ... of me?" he added lamely.

She laughed merrily.

"Mamma says never to be afraid of anything. She says that if you're
good, and you think good of other people, they'll be good, too."

"And you was thinkin' good of me when you kept the sun off," he
marvelled.

"But it's hard to think good of bees and nasty crawly things," she
confessed.

"But there's men that is nasty and crawly things," he argued.

"Mamma says no. She says there's good in every one."

"I bet you she locks the house up tight at night just the same," he
proclaimed triumphantly.

"But she doesn't. Mamma isn't afraid of anything. That's why she lets me
play out here alone when I want. Why, we had a robber once. Mamma got
right up and found him. And what do you think! He was only a poor hungry
man. And she got him plenty to eat from the pantry, and afterward she
got him work to do."

Ross Shanklin was stunned. The vista shown him of human nature was
unthinkable. It had been his lot to live in a world of suspicion and
hatred, of evil-believing and evil-doing. It had been his experience,
slouching along village streets at nightfall, to see little children,
screaming with fear, run from him to their mothers. He had even seen
grown women shrink aside from him as he passed along the sidewalk.

He was aroused by the girl clapping her hands as she cried out.

"I know what you are! You're an open air crank. That's why you were
sleeping here in the grass."

He felt a grim desire to laugh, but repressed it.

"And that's what tramps are--open air cranks," she continued. "I often
wondered. Mamma believes in the open air. I sleep on the porch at night.
So does she. This is our land. You m