storm and privation, through
death and disaster, the girl had clung tenaciously to her books and
papers. What in creation was in them? "For Heaven's sake--Miss
Edgarton--" he began.

"Oh, don't fuss--so," said little Eve Edgarton. "It's nothing but my
paper-doll book."

"Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton. With another racking effort
he edged himself even farther forward. "Miss Edgarton!" he asked quite
frankly, "are you--crazy?"

[Illustration: "Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton]

"N--o! But--very determined," drawled little Eve Edgarton. With
unruffled serenity she picked up a pulpy magazine-page from the
ground in front of her and handed it to him. "And it--would greatly
facilitate matters, Mr. Barton," she confided, "if you would kindly
begin drying out some papers against your side of the lantern."

"What?" gasped Barton.

Very gingerly he took the pulpy sheet between his thumb and
forefinger. It was a full-page picture of a big gas-range, and slowly,
as he scanned it for some hidden charm or value, it split in two and
fell soggily back to its mates. Once again for sheer nervous relief he
burst out laughing.

Out of her diminutiveness, out of her leanness, out of her
extraordinary litheness, little Eve Edgarton stared up speculatively
at Barton's great hulking helplessness. Her hat looked humorous. Her
hair looked humorous. Her tattered flannel shirt was distinctly
humorous. But there was nothing humorous about her set little mouth.

"If you--laugh," she threatened, "I'll tip you over backward
again--and--trample on you."

"I believe you would!" said Barton with a sudden sobriety more packed
with mirth than any laugh he had ever laughed.

"Well, I don't care," conceded the girl a bit sheepishly. "Everybody
laughs at my paper-doll book! Father does! Everybody does! When I'm
rearranging their old mummy collections--and cataloguing their old
South American birds--or shining up their old geological
specimens--they think I'm wonderful. But when I try to do the
teeniest--tiniest thing that happens to interest me--they call me
'crazy'! So that's why I come 'way out here to this cave--to play,"
she whispered with a flicker of real shyness. "In all the world," she
confided, "this cave is the only place I've ever found where there
wasn't anybody to laugh at me."

Between her placid brows a vindictive little frown blackened suddenly.
"That's why it wasn't specially convenient, Mr. Barton--to have yo