ring, caught sight of Lydia as soon as she had turned the corner.
She stopped short, with a startled gesture, on the edge of the woods,
but remained standing quietly while Rankin sprang up from his seat and
walked toward her smiling.

"Oh, Miss Emery," he called welcomingly. "I didn't recognize you for a
minute. Every once in a while a young lady or a child loses her way from
a picnic in the woods and stumbles into my settlement. I always have to
hurry to show them there's no danger of the wild man who lives in that
house eating them up." He came up to her now, and put out his hand with
a frank pleasure.

"I wasn't afraid," said Lydia; "I was startled for a minute, but I knew
right away it must be your house. You described it to me, you know."

"It's very much flattered that you remember its portrait," said the
owner. "Won't you honor it some more by sitting down in its veranda for
a while? Or must I take you back to your picnic party at once?"

Lydia moved on, looking about her at the piles of boards, half hidden by
vines, at the pool of clear water welling up through white sand in front
of the house, and at the low rough building, partly covered with
woodbine ruby-red against the weather-beaten wood.

"My picnic party's gone home," she explained. "It was only Marietta and
her little boy, anyhow. My sister thought it was going to rain, and took
the quickest way home. I told Marietta I'd walk across and take the
Garfield Avenue trolley line. I must have taken a wrong turn in the
path."

They had reached the veranda now, and Lydia sank into the chair which
Rankin offered her. She smiled her thanks silently, her face still
steeped in quiet ecstasy, and for a long time she said nothing. The
quick responsiveness that was at all times her most marked
characteristic answered this rare mood of Nature with an intensity
almost frightening in its visible joy.

Rankin also said nothing, looking at her reflectively and stroking his
close-clipped red beard. Above the faded brown of his work-shirt, his
face glowed with color. In the silent interval of the girl's slow
emergence from her reverie, his gaze upon her was so steady that when
Lydia finally glanced up at him he could not for a moment look away. The
limpid unconsciousness of her eyes changed into a startled look of
inquiry, as though he had spoken and she had not understood. Then a
flush rose to her cheeks, she looked down and away in a momentary
confusion, moved in h