CHAPTER VI.

DAPHNE.

The warm wind of the west (Zephyrus the tender) was bearing back to the mountain mementos of the vanished sun. In the ferny, moist places of the forest arose the sweet breaths that welcome the dusk, that lover of the hidden places. A few belated robins were yet calling to each other, and in far-away valleys and the nearer highlands whip-poor-wills sung to the night.

The darkness had not yet fallen. It was one of the white nights, when that shadowed cloak is fastened upward with the stars; an evening when the dusk and the dawn blend their colors and woo the pink afterglow of the day into their wedding of tender tones. The pale yellow of the lady-slippers could yet be seen nodding in their regal columns, and azalia-bushes yet could thrust their pink crowns from the gathering grays. High up the leaves rustled and whispered in their odorous wind-bath, but down below quiet reigned in the sylvan places, and they stretched over the mountain for miles. And then, suddenly, on a vast wooded plateau on three sides of which the earth seemed to drop away, something crossed with sound the sweet goodnights of the robin, and the sweeter silences between.

At first it was the rustle, rustle of last year's leaves under swift feet, and then, coming closer, the tired, gasping breath of one who has run or walked long; and then a slight girlish figure crossed the dusk and hurried with startled eyes through the wood that looked pathless.

Every now and then she would halt slightly to listen. Her bonnet, tied by the strings about the round throat, hung down her back, and, bareheaded, she looked like some

nymph of the wild places in the half-light that was kind to the coarse shoes and the dress of many patches that was not just the garb for a goddess.

Surely that was something behind her that tramped, tramped and bore the bushes down like that! It sounded ominous, crashing as it did through dry sticks and twigs that crackled; and then her evident terror gained a tinge of amazement as she stopped short, listening, with wide eyes and beating heart, and straining her ears to catch again a sound she fancied had come to her. Was that a voice?

The certainty of it was strong enough to cause her to turn suddenly to her right and walk stealthily forward, with hands pressed over the tumultuous bosom whose throbbing drowned her own hearing.

But she could not walk far, however; and where she stopped a great crevice yawned deep down, losing itself in blackness. In some places fallen trees bridged it, and the many-armed giant laurel leaned over from either edge, touching fingers at times across the chasm; and it was from across the chasm that sounds had come-and the voice, it could be no one who knew the mountain that would wander there in the dark.

But yes, it was the footfall of a horse striking a rocky surface that came to her ear now, a horse that had halted a moment; and again a voice spoke soothingly, encouragingly. She could hear it quite plainly now, and the footfalls continued; they were coming closer and closer. She could see the horse; there was a white star on his forehead. She could see the rider, whose head was bent peeringly forward as if to see ahead of the horse, but it was on the ground his eyes were bent as he brushed through the laurel that seemed growing thicker and thicker; it reared grotesque antlers high above his horse's head, and brushed whisperingly

past his own ears. He had just broken through what seemed a hedge of them, and reached again the creeping foliage of the huckleberries, when somewhere out of the dusk a voice that seemed quite close to him said, fearfully:

"You better stop right where you are, sir."

He stopped, accordingly, with a grim fancy of highway robbers crossing his mind. Had he not heard of a woman who once carried on such lone traffic on the mountain? But surely she had never made demands for lucre in those pleading, frightened tones! If she had, Don Edson most likely would have emptied his pockets for her. But he was much mystified as he halted and looked above and below and around, and could see only the wordless things of the forest-nothing from which the soft, vibrant voice could have come.

"Well, I've stopped," he remarked; "and if it is some disembodied spirit making the suggestion, I am waiting for the reason." And then straight ahead of him the laurel rustled and parted; two upraised arms shone in the dusk as they thrust aside and bent over the leafy curtain, and a young face, with shy, wide eyes, looked out from the shadows.

"It's me," she announced. "I was frightened when I saw you makin' for the edge like that. Didn't you see it?” "See what?"

"If you get down off your horse an' come this way a few steps, you'll find out," was the answer, accompanied by a soft little laugh, nervous yet elated.

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"Yes, I've found out;" and he arose from the edge of the crevice and looked across it into the eyes opposite. little more and my horse and I would have been down there. May I ask if you are the guardian angel of strays and idiots in this corner of the mountain?"

"No, I'm Krin," she said, soberly, drawing back a little, "I was huntin' our cattle."

"Krin, are you?" he asked, with the oddest feeling of unreality in the whole twilight picture. He kept his eyes on her face, not quite sure but that she would vanish if once away from his gaze. Had she not once before come to his aid in time of need, and looked at him with those serious, childish eyes, and helped him to a path he had been seeking vainly? And had she not straightway vanished that other time, and filled his days and nights with the haunting memory of her face and eyes? For he had not once been able to free himself from the pleading pathos in them. The odd feeling that had deterred him from asking questions about her came over him, bringing with it an unreal sort of atmosphere, and through it he heard himself say:

"And you are Krin? Do you know that for a moment I fancied you a ghost instead of a girl."

“I ain't a girl” she answered, in the same colorless, sober way, "and I must go on; it'll soon be late. If you want to get off that ledge, you'll have to ride most half a mile along it, till you get to the Neck; then cross over an' get on the old road. You can go wherever you want to on it."

"If I know enough," he added. "And you are not a girl? Then my instinct told me right. I knew you were some ghost of the woods! Krin, Krin! Is that another name for Daphne? That is who you are, I think-Daphne, who was changed into the laurel-bush; and you look all laurel but your face and eyes. If you should vanish now, I would be sure it was just Daphne who spoke to me out of the laurel."

"I don't know who you mean," she said. "It ain't anyone on the mountain, I reckon." Then she moved out from the circling arms of the bush and stood outlined in the straight, pale folds of her faded gown. "I cross the Neck, an' if you

ride along the edge I'll show you to the old road. Don't ride far back in the brush, though-there's another crack in the rock there that's worse than this ledge; it would let you down to the "den." And her voice dropped a tone lower, as if impressed with a great horror at the thought of what already lay in the "den."

"So I have been riding around and over that snake-den, have I?" he asked, eying dubiously the yawning break in the rock. "May be that's why my horse needed so much coaxing over this level; he had more wit than his rider."

"Some horses, and dogs too, know a heap," she agreed, in a soft, sedate way, as she moved along the chasm opposite him-" a heap about some things. They know quicker than people about snakes an'-an' ghosts an' such-like; they are scared of them."

Are they?" he queried, smilingly. "Well, my horse is not at all afraid of you."

"He ain't any call to be;" and there was yet light enough for him to see her serious face, with no comprehension of his humor in it. "I never did hurt to anything-not willingly."

"I believe you," he said, with the strongest, oddest desire to reach across the chasm and touch just once the sloping shoulder that slipped away from the fair neck; just to cross that threatening depth and assure himself of the reality of the form moving through the dusk opposite him. His whimsical fancy was connecting her with a fair, unreal thing of legend that warns creatures of earth away from dangers, she glided so lightly and easily through the meshes of twining limbs and vines, like a slim bird, needing no trodden path; and if she would only speak loudly or brusquely once, he thought it might dispel the ghost-like fancies that persisted in coming to him. But she would not—the soft, rare tones had in them something akin to the