as listening. A little girl
with a lisp was trying in vain to divide her attention between the story
and an imprisoned fly the boy next her was torturing, whilst Phrony was
reading a novel on the sly. The others were all engaged in any other
occupation than thinking of Hannibal or listening to the reader.

Gordon had shut the book in a fit of disappointment and disgust and
dismissed the school, and now he was trying with very poor success to
justify himself for his outbreak of impatience. His failure spoiled the
pleasure he had anticipated in going to the Springs to find out who the
Madonna of the Dust was.

At a spot high up on the rocky backbone, one could see for a long way
between the great brownish-gray trunks, and Gordon turned out of the dim
path to walk on the thick brown carpet of pine-needles. It was a
favorite spot with Gordon, and here he read Keats and Poe and other
poets of melancholy, so dear to a young man's heart.

Beyond the pines at their eastern edge, a great crag jutted forth in a
sort of shoulder, a vast flying-buttress that supported the pine-clad
Ridge above--a mighty stone Atlas carrying the hills on its shoulder.
From this rock one looked out eastward over the rolling country below to
where, far beyond sloping hills covered with forest, it merged into a
soft blue that faded away into the sky itself. In that misty space lay
everything that Gordon Keith had known and loved in the past. Off there
to the eastward was his old home, with its wide fields, its deep
memories. There his forefathers had lived for generations and had been
the leaders, making their name always the same with that of gentleman.

Farther away, beyond that dim line lay the great world, the world of
which he had had as a boy a single glimpse and which he would
yet conquer.

Keith had climbed to the crest of the Ridge and was making his way
through the great pines to the point where the crag jutted out sheer and
massive, overlooking the reaches of rolling country below, when he
lifted his eyes, and just above him, half seated, half reclining against
a ledge of rock, was the very girl he had seen two days before. Her eyes
were closed, and her face was so white that the thought sprang into
Keith's mind that she was dead, and his heart leaped into his throat. At
the distance of a few yards he stopped and scanned her closely. She had
on a riding-habit; her hat had fallen on her neck; her dark hair,
loosened, lay about her throat