ced suddenly, "they had a hard time persuading me that I
_couldn't_ fly. They had to keep watching me, because I'd climb up on
things and try to fly down."

"Have you plumb outgrown that idee?" he inquired, somewhat drily.
"Because I'm not cravin' to help you fly offen that mountain top."

Her laugh rippled out like bird notes as she replied with large scorn of
fourteen years: "_That_ was when I was a child."

After a moment she added appealingly: "The last time I saw you, General
Prince said that when I came to these hills, you'd be 'charitable' to
me."

"I aims to be," he asserted stoutly, "but it wouldn't skeercely be
charitable to be the cause of your breakin' an arm or"--he paused an
instant before adding with sedateness--"or a limb."

* * * * *

But Anne had her way. She always had her way, and some days later they
looked down on an outspread world from the crest of Slag-face. Boone had
not been long in discovering that this slender girl was driven by a
dauntless spirit that made of physical courage a positive fetish, so he
had pretended weariness himself from time to time and demanded a
breathing spell.

The sky overhead was splendidly soft and blue, broken by tumbling cloud
masses, which, it seemed, one could almost reach out and touch.

From the foreground where they sat flushed and resting, with moss and
rock and woodland about them, the prospect went off into distances where
mountain shadows fell across valleys, and other ridges were ranked row
on row. Still more remote was the vagueness of the horizon whose misty
violet merged with the robin's-egg blue of the sky.

The girl stood, leaning against the tree, and her violet eyes were full
of imaginative light.

Through lids half closed the boy looked at her. She was an exponent of
that world of which he had dreamed. He thought of the hall where he had
first seen her; of the silk and broadcloth, of the mahogany and silver;
of the whole setting which was home to her, and to him a place into
which he had come as a trespasser in homespun.

Into the tempering of the crude ore came a new element. Asa Gregory had
been the fire, and so far Victor McCalloway had been the water. Now,
came the third factor of life's process--the oil; for there and then on
the hilltop he had fallen in love, and it was not until he was riding
home in the starlight that he stopped to consider the chances of
disaster.

It had been a wonderful day,