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"But you are an anchor one would be puzzled to find a chain for," he continued. "You are such an elusive creature; and I-I really wanted to talk seriously to you to-day about-some things."

"Well, we can talk and walk at the same time, can't we? And we must be getting back to the house or miss our tea. This has been a perfect afternoon. I have four varieties of violets to take back as trophies, and being so well satisfied I can listen even to your serious 'somethings;' but when Auntie, or Papa, or even your senior, proposes serious subjects to me they are usually preparing me for a lecture. Are you?

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"Can't you imagine me wanting to say something to you, Dinah, that would be serious? Yet-"

"Certainly," she broke in. "I can always understand that you have a weakness for talking seriously to most girls, haven't you, Don? And the matrons, have not a few of them received your 'serious' consideration as well? Ah, yes," she added, with an impish impulse to be ironical, "seriousness is always becoming to people with sensitive mouths and dreamy eyes; and then it is always so much more effective."

The dreamy eyes, that were darkly indefinite as to color, elongated under a quick frown, as when the sun suddenly strikes one in the face unsheltered, and a flush of red crept up to his forehead.

"How little faith you have in me. Yet I did come out here to forget old follies; yes, oid faults. I need to before I can hope for any new luck that is good luck."

There was no anger in his voice, and the girl's eyes looked sorry as he spoke.

"I am ashamed of myself for saving such things to you," she said. "Why don't you retaliate by giving me a lecture, as you used to when I was rude? I could stand

it better than your hurt acceptance of my ugliness. Don't mind anything I said, for I would always have faith in anything you would give your word to-only-I don't understand-"

"No, that is it," he agreed. "You don't understandneither did Uncle Don about the music; but never mind, Dinah, that is not your fault-more than likely it is mine. Shall we go now?"

And descending the peak of wide views, they made their way down to an old grass-grown road through the timber, and found little to say to each other on their way back to the high-road.

She had known him so long-always, it seemed to her; and the two young people had for years laughed over and flirted with that scheme of their elders-the idea that Dinah Floyd was to be Dinah Edson when Don settled down and she stopped flirting.

But of late Don had not laughed at the plan as of old. His life had begun to seem to him so much the life of one who garners dead-sea fruit, finding the hands and the lips poisoned, while all the time there was within that bit of divinity that protested. An idea that this keen-eyed, coolheaded girl would understand or would care had prompted him to speak. He had always liked her, and perhaps-and perhaps

Tired as he was of an erratic life, the freshness of the forest in the sweetest of seasons was not at all the doleful thing to him he had jestingly complained of to the girl. There was so much of novelty in the thought of possessing all that wild land and living for a season in its hills; and Donald Edson had said, "It is all yours if you go there and live one year, showing at the end of it that you have any care for it, or any interest in its development. As you don't take to anything else in the way of business, you may find your vocation as a landed proprietor. You will hear no Wagnerian orchestration in the Laurel Hills, but the birds sing, I believe. I know the foxes used to bark, and the panthers call, and the bear and deer can't all be cleared out."

Balancing the novelty and the sacrifice of the world, and influenced in no slight degree by the sensationalism of the idea, Don had accepted the offer and the year's isolation. At least the birds would sing. And the birds did sing, and he would sing back to them, trying to establish some brotherhood of feeling with the feathered natives, since the human ones did not take kindly to the new owner, who they thought would likely interfere with the amount of lumber surreptitiously "snaked" out of the old claim that many of them had lived on until they had an ingrained feeling of combativeness against the holders of deeds and such like legal trifles.

"It's natural enough that those people who have lived on the little clearings for forty years care more for them than a man who has never seen them before," he decided, a few evenings after the arrival of his friends, the Floyds; "blest if I like to interfere with their homes or plans of living for a whim that may result in a fiasco. I think I will just drop the interesting question of tenants, and look up the lumber or coal resources instead."

"You make a paragon of landlords for the tenants," laughed Dinah; and the eager, interested old gentleman who was bending over old maps of the district looked up to remark: "That is just like you, Don, like you always were; but those ideas are too utopian for this age and this region. The mountaineers themselves will only think you a mild sort of lunatic if you begin with them that way. Be practical and level-headed, my boy; don't be too quick to consign your pearls to the trough."

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"Especially if they are ever likely to be worth the wear ing," added Dinah.

But the placid-faced, pretty old lady, who was calmly laying high-lights of crimson on the écru roofs of impossible cottages, smiled on him kindly.

"Never mind their sordid practicalities, Don; they are both very wise, no doubt, but people sometimes find their best wisdom in their hearts. May be you are one of that kind."

CHAPTER IV.

A DEATH ON THE MOUNTAIN.

"Auntie, I will want to borrow your biggest piece of canvas and whole stock of materials. Genius burns in me this morning. I have found a model inspiring."

"Mr. March insisted that you would."

"Oh, it was types for literary work, not painting, that he meant, and just now I have seen the first specimen that looks promising for either a faun of the Alleghanies, Auntie, with the profile of a Hermes; he is really an event." "Who is the event?" inquired Don, coming in from the stables. "Your enthusiasm makes me jealous."

"Look out of that window toward the kitchen porch. Isn't he a picture?"

The picture was that of a young man of twenty-five or more, a mountaineer, but with a slight theatrical tinge in the dress that was really picturesque, though it might have been the handsome, unusual face and head that made it seem so. Boots soiled with the clay came to the knees over breeches of light corduroy; a cartridge-belt circled a waist that was lithe and flexible as a deer-hound's; a maroon shirt

exposed a bit of the throat, that was white as a baby's where the sun had not kissed it; a dark hat, with wide, flexible brim, shaded hair that was the warmest of blonde-the red gold that is seldom seen on any but a child's head. And as he stood nonchalantly with one foot on the porch-step, his gun resting across his straight shoulders, he really was enough to win a second glance from an artist.

"And his eyes are blue as violets," whispered the girl. "He looked up at the window as he passed, and my heart was won in a glance. Find out who he is, Don; I am going to have that face as a model if I have to make love to the man to get it."

"Dinah!"

"Well, I will, Auntie. You have complained ever since we came because I don't paint. You will have cause no longer, if I can only prevail on that Greek-featured treasure to sit for me. I do wonder what he is."

"A handsome nonentity, likely," ventured Don. The honest working-people here have little time to study such effective combinations of costume and attitude. I can't see his face from here, but the figure looks familiar."

Just then the subject of their curiosity, who had been talking to someone through the window, walked up the two steps, seated himself on the edge of the porch, and taking off his wide hat for a fan, turned his head so that they could see the gold-red hair and the features Dinah had named over. Don turned away from the view with a laugh.

"Oh, yes, I can introduce him to you and disenchant you as soon as you like. It is one of my tenants, and not one of the best of them, either."

"If Dinah had guessed you had such bits of perfection among your mountain people, she would not have let you go alone on so many of your rides," nodded Aunt Lottie,

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