t
swung wishfully across, lay a wedge-like vista of muddy water,
bottom-land, bluff, and sky. The mid-morning sun glinted upon the
treacherous current, upon the wet grass of the bottom-land, upon the
green-brown bluff and the Gatling at its top, upon the far, curving
azure of the sky. Against the dazzle, her blue eyes winked harder than
the breeze-tossed anemones; stretching out upon her back, she rested
them in the shifting canopy of foliage.

A startled kingbird flashed past her, coming from a tree by the cut. She
got up, and saw a man in uniform standing near. He was a young man, with
a flushed face and wildly rumpled hair. In one hand he held a tasselled
hat; in the other, a rifle. He leaned forward from behind a bull-berry
bush, and his look was guiltily eager and admiring.

As startled as the kingbird, she grasped the cow-horn and lifted it to
her lips.

But she did not blow a warning. The uniform retreated in cowardly haste,
the tasselled hat lowered, and the eyes beseeched.

A moment. Then, the man smiled and shook his hat at her roguishly.
"A-ah!" he said--in the tone of one who has made a discovery--"I didn't
know before that a fairy lives in this grove!"

Marylyn glanced over a shoulder. "Does there?" she questioned, half
whispering.

He took a forward step. "There does," he answered solemnly. "It's
Goldenhair, as well as I can make out. But where on earth are the
bears?"

Instantly, she had her bonnet. "My! my!" she said. "_Bears!_ Indians is
bad enough." She peered into the long heaps of tangled grapevine.

"Oh, now!" he exclaimed self-accusingly. He whipped a knee with the hat.
"Now, I've gone and scared you! Say, honest! There isn't a bear in a
hundred miles--I'd stake my stupid head on it."

"But Golden----" she began.

"Goldenhair?" He smiled again, by way of entreaty. "Why, Goldenhair
is--you."

She clapped on her bonnet in a little flurry, pulling it down to hide
the last yellow wisp.

Misunderstanding the action, he began to plead. "Oh, don't go; _please_
don't go! I've wanted to meet you for months and months. I've heard so
much about you--Lounsbury's told me."

She gave him a quick look from under the bonnet's rim. "Mr. Lounsbury,"
she repeated, and stiffened her lips.

"Yes."

"He don't know much about me, I reckon. He ain't been to see us for
'months and months.'" She began to dig at the ground with the toe of a
shoe.

"Well--well----" he floundered, "he's been awful rushed