hing and came. I was to be reared 'in
the wilderness, where nothing evil comes,' was what both my parents
said. So I have been, and--that's all."

Adrian was silent for some moments. The girl's face had grown dreamy
and full of a pathetic tenderness as it always did when she discussed
her unknown father and mother, even with Angelique. Though, in
reality, she had not been allowed to miss what she had never known.
Then she looked up with a smile and observed:

"Your turn."

"Yes--I--suppose so. May as well give the end of my story first----
I'm a runaway."

"Why?"

"No matter why."

"That isn't fair."

He parried the indignation of her look by some further questions of
his own. "Have you always lived here?"

"Always."

"You go to the towns sometimes, I suppose."

"I've never seen a town, except in pictures."

"Whew! Don't you have any friends? Any girls come to see you?"

"I never saw a girl, only myself in that poor broken glass of
Angelique's; and, of course, the pictured ones--as of the towns--in
the books."

"You poor child!"

Margot's brown face flushed. She wanted nobody's pity and she had not
felt that her life was a singular or narrow one, till this outsider
came. A wish very like Angelique's, that he had stayed where he
belonged, arose in her heart, but she dismissed it as inhospitable.

"I'm not poor. Not in the least. I have everything any girl could want
and I have--uncle! He is the best, the wisest, the noblest man in all
the world. I know it, and so Angelique says. She's been in your
towns, if you please. Lived in them and says she never knew what
comfort meant until she came to Peace Island and us. You don't
understand."

Margot was more angry than she had ever been, and anger made her
decidedly uncomfortable. She sprang up hastily, saying:

"If you've nothing to tell, I must go. I want to get into the forest
and look after my friends there. The storm may have hurt them."

She was off down the mountain, as swift and sure-footed as if it were
not a rough pathway that made him blunder along very slowly. For he
followed, at once, feeling that he had not been "fair," as she had
accused, in his report of himself; and that only a complete confidence
was due these people who had treated him so kindly.

"Margot! Margot! Wait a minute! You're too swift for me! I want
to----"

Just there he caught his foot in a running vine, stumbled over a
hidden rock, and measured his length, head down