high spirits.

"I tell you, boy," he confided on the way back to the cabin, "it's a
mighty good sign when a woman wants to jump the traces, and a good man
isn't going to lick her into submission for doing it. The chances are
a woman wouldn't take to kicking if the traces didn't chafe. I've
meant to be kind to Matilda, but kindness can be chafing at times. A
woman like Matilda, a little, self-sacrificing woman, is real
enlightening if you pay attention."

Matilda seemed to develop and expand during that trip North. She
ordered her meals with an abandon that electrified the waiters on the
train, and then her sense of economy demanded that she should eat what
she had ordered. Her tips were dazzling and erratic, but they, and her
quaint personality, won for her great comfort and care. She was in
better condition, physically, than she had been for many a day when,
one golden winter afternoon, she stood in Olive Treadwell's
drawing-room in Boston and waited for Cynthia. Mrs. Treadwell was out,
but the "young lady," the maid said, was in.

"How very fortunate," thought Matilda and then took her rigid stand
across the room. Unconsciously she was waiting to see what Lansing
Treadwell had done to this girl of the hills whom he had so ruthlessly
and breath-takingly borne away. Lans was, unknowingly, before the most
awful bar of judgment he had ever stood--the bar of pure womanhood!

There was a step upon the stairs; a quick, yet faltering step, and then
Cynthia entered the room and came toward Matilda Markham with deep,
questioning eyes and slow smile. The impression the girl made was to
last the rest of Matilda's life. Once, years before, Matilda had seen
a rare and lovely butterfly caught in the meshes of a net, and, oddly
enough, the memory came to her now as she looked at the sweet,
starry-eyed creature advancing. She was as surely caught in an
invisible net of some kind as the long-ago butterfly had been. Matilda
Markham noted the conventional gown of dull blue with silver trimming;
the little slippers to match, and the silken stockings; her eyes rested
upon the string of small silver beads wound around the slim throat;
all, all were but part of the mesh that caught and held the spirit that
had ceased to struggle.

How lovely she was, this Cynthia of Lost Hollow, in spite of the crude
conventions! The frank, waiting eyes were as gray-blue as her mountain
skies; the lips, half-parted, had not forgotten to s