CHAPTER VII.

THE DAY AFTER.

In the bright light of the next morning, the light that disillusions so many, Mr. Edson awoke late, with a glimmering sense of being tired and wondering what had happened to him; and when he remembered, he proceeded to dress himself, to a musical accompaniment rather cheery.

"If those two were witch and warlock who abide in the timber, they let me get home safe, anyway,” he confided to the image of himself in the glass, an image he had halted before and examined critically several times during his preparations for breakfast. Some idea of the reason for the careful study might be gleaned from a mental estimate that accompanied it.

"Good enough face; um! yes, that is to a careless observer. Are you a careless observer, Donald? You oughtn't to be this morning. You should try to find out what there is in your statuesque beauty that compels in the native mind—the abstract native—the idea that you are of religious tendencies. I can't say that you look the part. Your appearance indicates a good digestion, undisturbed by any weight of thought on any subject whatever, least of all the sort that promotes the bilious-hued doubts of the Pagan, or the ethereal pallor of Daphne. No, you look uncommonly well fed by the food of this world, my boy-so much of this world that I am puzzled the—the blessedest to account for your visions of yesterday in the timber; for of course you were tipsy on the east wind, Donald; and of course there was no monster of the green eyes there to mesmerize you at all, at all; and it was just some old witch of the hills whom you saw and imagined Daphne; and

may be the hint about religion and babies was all in your mind; and, summing it all up, you're in a bad way, Mr. Edson."

And then Mr. Edson descended to the lower regions, warbling plaintively, "I'm not myself at all."

"I should think not," remarked Miss Dinah, who espied him passing the sitting-room door on a quest for breakfast. "Considering the lazy lateness of the hour, and the probable depth of dissipation that kept you out all night, I have small wonder that you refuse to acknowledge yourself."

She was looking pretty enough, and provoking enough, to make many a man forget a breakfast, and Mr. Edson was by no means blind to the charm of the winebrown eyes, or the very becoming array of pale pink that clung daintily about her—a fair rose of a woman alluring. Something so healthily sure of earth, he thought; and the very contrast suggested a pallid, starlit lily of the woods he had seen, even while he said, commendingly:

"How very pretty you look in that pink gown, Dinah! Your artist eye should tell you always to wear that color. Doesn't Aunt Lottie want to do you in water-colors this morning?"

"All a clever attempt to evade confession," decided the young lady. "Where did you wander to when you left here in a temper yesterday, you deserter? and why that musical refrain of a lost identity?"

"S-sh!" he whispered, theatrically, clutching her wrist and drawing her across to the dining-room. "Use your arts to secure me a substantial repast, of which I stand sorely in need, and I am your slave to command; all my sins will I confess, even to the devious wanderings of which you question."

"Nonsense! Don't be silly, Don; and do let go my wrist.

Serve you right if the cook refused you even a cup of coffee."

"Plead for me, won't you?"

"Why did you not stay for breakfast with that other girl?" she demanded; "for I know it wasn't a man that made you forget to come home. Wouldn't she give you any?"

"I do not believe she eats," answered Mr. Edson, debatably mysterious.

"Good gracious! then there was a girl!" ejaculated the prophetess, astonished at her own accuracy. "Come right in to the table and tell me all about it! Nettie, please get Mr. Edson a bit of breakfast and some coffee, will you? Yes, I know it is away past breakfast-hour; but you can charm. that cook into sending him something nice, can't you? I thought so. Nettie, you are a treasure, and when I get married and want a housekeeper, I shall certainly hunt you up; shan't we, Don? Now there is your coffee; half the contract is filled; so tell me something about the other girl. Why does she not eat?"

'Do goddesses ever eat?" queried Mr. Edson, proving himself outside the circle celestial by the energy with which he attacked even the cold biscuit.

"A goddess! Um! This is serious, my child-a goddess in the wooden country. May I ask what particular part of the heavens this one dropped from?"

"She didn't drop," corrected Mr. Edson; "she rose up.” "Worse and worse! I thought you had quit cultivating that order. Has your deity of the lower world a name? and does she chew snuff? All the virgins I have encountered about here are addicted to that pulverized consolation. Is she an exception? Who is she?

"Don't know so much of her as I would like to myself,” he confessed; "only I'll swear she doesn't indulge in

snuff. She is a wisp of moonlight turned into a girl. Is that too poetical for a breakfast accompaniment? And as to who she is what sort of a memory have you for mythological lore, Dinah? Who were the progenitors of that Daphne of the laurel episode? If you can tell me that, I can give you some definite history of the immediate family of my moonlight girl."

"What nonsense you are talking, Don Edson; you are just making this all up for my benefit. Daphne? Daphne? Oh, yes, that was the one Apollo loved; you will be imagining yourself Apollo next. Well, was she fleeing from the bull?

"No," answered Mr. Edson, in perfect good faith, having forgotten the associated myth of Apollo's metamorphosis. "No, she wasn't; she had been hunting cattle on the mountain."

And something in the reply sent Miss Floyd into an immoderate fit of laughter, from which she answered, cynically, "That is what the latter-day Daphnes are all doing, my child; but tell me something more of her."

"I refuse," he said, pushing aside his empty cup. "I've earned my breakfast, and will be impaled no longer on the pin of your curiosity. I do not know anything about Daphne except her face and her voice; but there is a sort of fascination in ignorance sometimes, and I don't intend to try learning more. Can you comprehend that? No, I suppose not, as you are of the sex divine; but to average masculinity, the things one does not know about a woman are always so much more fascinating than the things one. does. But you do not understand, nor would not believe it of me if you did, would you, Dinah?" And he arose, smiling down in a benign way at the pouting, disappointed face. "Is your father around this morning? Not going to leave

us before next week? That's good; I want him to help me out of a quandary."

And an hour later he emerged from Mr. Floyd's "den" bearing under his arm the fruit of a quest in the form of a thin cloth-bound book of a rusty color, which he carried to his room and bent over with engrossing eagerness; and the second bell had rung for lunch when he arose from it, with the quandary evidently erased from his mind. "Poor devil!" he muttered, commiseratingly, as he changed his coat and made himself beautiful to join the others; "and he so ignorant himself in all science that he could not explain away the thing they think diabolical. Poor devil! Well, may be I can help him clear his own mind regarding it, anyway."

Which soliloquy proved that the fascinating ignorance regarding his nymph was at least not filling the mind of Mr. Edson to the extinction of all else he had met or been impressed by through that ride on the witchy side of the mountain.

"And I am going to put up a saw-mill, and make use of some timber over on the 'wild land,' he announced, when the conversation turned, as it often did, to his plan of remaining there. "No, I am not afraid of losing myself again, Miss Dinah; and did I not tell you the mountain has a guardian angel who takes care of fools?"

"No, you did not," she responded, quickly; "that is a part of the story you forgot. Is it Daphne?"

But he only grimaced in answer, and began giving Mr. Floyd an account of probable location, natural advantages, etc., for his new enterprise.

"Somewhere along the edge of the glade, so that the hauling will be all down the mountain," he explained. "Oh, yes, I'll be a lumberman if I keep on; and I'm learning a little every day. There ought to be some decent houses