beside her, and her dishevelled hair
hanging about her shoulders, was Mrs. Perkenpine, reading a newspaper. At
the sound of his footsteps she looked up.

"Well, I'll be bound!" she said. "If I'd crawl into a fox-hole I expect
you'd come and sniff in after me."

Matlack stood and looked at her for a moment. He could not help smiling at
the uncomfortable manner in which she was trying to make herself
comfortable on those rough rocks.

"I'll tell you what it is, Mrs. Perkenpine," he said, "you'll get yourself
into the worst kind of a hole if you go off this way, leavin' everything
at sixes and sevens behind you."

"It's my nater," said she. "I'm findin' it out and gittin' it ready to
show to other people. You're the fust one that's seed it. How do you like
it?"

"I don't like it at all," said the guide, "and I have just come to tell
you that if you don't go back to your tent and cook supper to-night and
attend to your business, I'll walk over to Sadler's, and tell Peter to
send some one in your place. I'm goin' over there anyway, if he don't send
a man to take Martin's place."

"Peter Sadler!" ejaculated Mrs. Perkenpine, letting her tumbled newspaper
fall into her lap. "He's a man that knows his own nater, and lets other
people see it. He lives his own life, if anybody does. He's individdle
down to the heels, and just look at him! He's the same as a king. I tell
you, Phil Matlack, that the more I knows myself, just me, the more I'm
tickled. It seems like scootin' round in the woods, findin' all sorts of
funny hoppin' things and flowers that you never seed before. Why, it
'ain't been a whole day since I begun knowin' myself, and I've found out
lots. I used to think that I liked to cook and clean up, but I don't; I
hate it."

Matlack smiled, and taking out his pipe, he lighted it and sat down on a
rock.

"I do believe," he said, "that you are the most out and out hermit of the
whole lot; but it won't do, and if you don't get over your objections to
cookin' you'll have to walk out of these woods to-morrow."

Mrs. Perkenpine sat and looked at her companion a few moments without
giving any apparent heed to his remarks.

"Of course," said she, "it isn't only findin' out what you be yourself,
but it's lettin' other people see what you be. If you didn't do that it
would be like a pot a-b'ilin' out in the middle of a prairie, with nobody
nearer nor a hundred miles."

"It would be the same as if it hadn't b'iled," rem