street and asked, in
friendly fashion, "How are you to-day?" she looked up at him and
replied, "Very well, thank you, sir," and he caught a glimpse of a
lovely chin and a sad and sensitive mouth.

"She's had more than her share of trouble, that girl has," he thought as
he passed on.

Thereafter a growing desire to see her eyes, to hear her voice, troubled
him.

Kauffman stopped him on the road next day and said: "I am Bavarian, and
in my country we respect the laws of the forest. I honor your office,
and shall regard all your regulations. I have a few cattle which will
naturally graze in the forest. I wish to take out a permit for them."

To this Hanscom cordially replied: "Sure thing. That's what I'm here
for. And if you want any timber for your corrals just let me know and
I'll fix you out."

Kauffman thanked him and rode on.

As the weeks passed Hanscom became more and more conscious of the
strange woman's presence in the valley. He gave, in truth, a great deal
of thought to her, and twice deliberately rode around that way in the
hope of catching sight of her. He could not rid himself of a feeling of
pity. The vision of her delicately modeled chin and the sorrowful droop
in the line of her lips never left him. He wished--and the desire was
more than curiosity--to meet her eyes, to get the full view of her face.

Gradually she came to the exchange of a few words with him, and always
he felt her dark eyes glowing in the shadow of her head-dress, and they
seemed quite as sad as her lips. She no longer appeared afraid of him,
and yet she did not express a willingness for closer contact. That she
was very lonely he was sure, for she had few acquaintances in the town
and no visitors at all. No one had ever been able to penetrate to the
interior of the cabin in which she secluded herself, but it was reported
that she spent her time in the garden and that she had many strange
flowers and plants growing there. But of this Hanscom had only the most
diffused hearsay.

Watson's thought concerning the lonely woman was not merely
dishonoring--it was ruthless; and when he met her, as he occasionally
did, he called to her in a voice which contained something at once
savage and familiar. But he could never arrest her hurrying step. Once
when he planted himself directly in her way she bent her head and
slipped around him, like a partridge, feeling in him the enmity that
knows no pity and no remorse.

His baseness was well