ssness of his sky-blue eyes.

"I reckon ye don't remember me," he hazarded, by way of introduction;
and she shook her head.

"Have I seen you before?" she inquired, and Boone found it difficult to
talk to her because he was so busy looking at her. There had been girls
as well as boys at the state university, but among them had been none
like Anne Masters. Boone was to learn from a broader experience that
there were few like her--anywhere. Even now when she was a bud not yet
blossomed, she had that indescribable fairy god-mother's gift to which
no analyst can fit a formula--the charm which lays its spell upon others
and the gift of individuality.

"You've seed me--seen me, I mean--before. But it's right natcher'l fer
ye to fergit it, because it was a long spell back. You gave me the first
Christmas gift I ever got in my life--a piece of plum cake. Do you
remember me now?"

The light of recollection broke over her face, illuminating it--and Anne
Masters had those eyes that actually sparkle within--the dancing eyes
that are much rarer than the phrase.

"Of course I remember you! I've thought about you--lots. I've always
called you the 'fruit-cake boy.'" Suddenly her laugh rippled out in a
lilting merriment. "Don't you remember when you challenged Morgan with
the fencing foils?"

"Oh," exclaimed Boone, flushing, "I'd plumb disremembered that."

It was June, with days of diamond weather and the bloom still upon wild
rose and rhododendron. Anne looked away beyond the boy's head to the
tallest crest of the many that ringed the town. Suddenly she demanded:
"Have you ever been up there--at the tip-top of that mountain?"

He nodded his head, and she at once commanded: "I want you to show me
the way up there--I want to go up and climb to the top of that tree that
you can see from here, the one that stands up higher than all the
others."

Boone shook his head soberly. "It's a right hazardous undertakin' fer
anybody thet isn't used to scalin' clifts," he objected. "Why do you
want to go up there to the top of old Slag-face?"

Her expression had clouded to autocratic displeasure at his failure of
immediate assent, but only for an instant; then her eyes altered again
from coercive frown to irresistible smile.

"Why?" she exclaimed. "Why does a bird want to fly? Up there at the top
of that tree you'd be almost in the sky. You'd be looking down on
everything but the clouds themselves. When I was a little girl--" she
announ