!_"

The cry came from afar; indeed, from the woods across the river.
Yet as the hare pricks up her ears at the sound of a distant horn and
darts away to the covert, so did Miss Marty pause, and, after
listening for a second or two, hurry back to the log to resume her
shoes and stockings.

Her shoes she found where she had left them, and one stocking on the
rank grass close beside them. _But where was the other?_

She looked to right, to left, and all around her in a panic.
Could she have dropped it into the stream in her hurry? And had the
stream carried it down the fall?

She drew on one stocking and shoe, and catching up the other shoe in
her hand, crept down to explore. The stream leapt out of sight
through a screen of hazels. Parting these, she peered through them,
to judge the distance between her and the pool and see if any track
led down to it. A something flashed in her eyes, and she drew back.
Then, peering forward again, she let a faint cry escape her.

On the pebbly bank beside the pool stood a man--Dr. Hansombody--in
regimentals. In one hand he held a razor (this it was that had
flashed so brightly in the sunlight), in the other her lost stocking.
Apparently he had been shaving, kneeling beside the pool and using it
for a mirror; for one half of his face was yet lathered, and his
haversack lay open on the stones by the water's edge beside his shako
and a tin cup under which he had lit a small spirit-lamp; and
doubtless, while he knelt, the stream had swept Miss Marty's stocking
down to him. He was studying it in bewilderment; which changed to
glad surprise as he caught sight of her, aloft between the hazels.

"Hallo!" he challenged. "A happy month to you!"

"Oh, please!" Miss Marty covered her face.

"I'll spread it out to dry on the stones here."

"Please give it back to me. Yes, please, I beg of you!"

"I don't see the sense of that," answered the Doctor. "You can't
possibly wear it until it's dry, you know."

"But I'd _rather_."

"Are you anchored up there? Very well; then I'll bring it up to you
in a minute or so. But just wait a little; for you wouldn't ask me
to come with half my face unshaven, would you?"

"I can go back. . . . No, I can't. The bank is too slippery. . . .
But I can look the other way," added Miss Marty, heroically.

"I really don't see why you should," answered the Doctor, as he
resumed his kneeling posture. "Now, to my mind," he went on in the
interv