no golden tones in it; only the rich browns of the autumn woods, and her
eyes matched it in color. She was paler than the other ranch girls, with
a soft, healthy pallor, although to-day a little tanned and rosier than
usual from her week's trip in the caravan.

Frieda glanced around to see Jean leaning over the water with her hair
covering her face. It did not seem worth while to disturb her, so
without a word, Frieda slipped away to their tent to search for more
thread for her sewing.

Jean could not hear very well at this time had she spoken, for the brook
made a roary, gurgling noise of its own in her ears, and her head swam
from being held upside down so long.

"Crunch, crunch, crunch." Some one was marching along the side of the
stream right in her direction. Jean did not trouble to take her hair out
of the water or to look around. Of course it could be no one but Frieda!

"Well, I never in all my life!" she heard a perfectly strange masculine
voice exclaim. "I know I have walked straight into fairy land, and you
must be the queen who has brought all this magic to pass over night, for
I passed this stream just two days ago and there wasn't a sign of a tent
or a caravan or a princess anywhere around."

Jean flung back her long, brown hair with a gasp of sheer surprise, and
the drops of crystal water showered around her like the diamonds that
fell from the mouth of the good sister in the fairy story.

"I have been washing my hair," she announced to the strange youth, and
then because her explanation was so obvious, they both laughed. "You
see, I hadn't the faintest idea anybody could turn up in this wilderness
except us," she explained, not very grammatically. "We are making a
caravan trip through the state."

"I suppose I ought to say I am awfully sorry I intruded," the young
fellow answered. "Of course, you know, I would say it if I had bobbed
into a lady's boudoir unexpectedly, but I am so glad to see some one in
this out-of-the-way place that I haven't a social fib at my disposal.
Don't you think you could let me stop to rest and perhaps talk to you a
few minutes?"

Jean drew herself up in an effort to look as dignified and
unapproachable as she felt sure Jack and Olive would have done under the
same circumstances. Far be it from either of them to engage in a
friendly conversation with a stranger, even in a trackless waste; but to
save her life Jean couldn't keep her eyes from shining mischievously.
Th