for a shot at some big game. Now he stood upon the granite edges of the
pool, disappointed even in his instinctive search for footprints, with
only the slowly widening circles left upon the surface by her hurried
flight to show him that he had not wholly been mistaken in his thought
that something most unusual had recently occurred there in the "cove."
Eagerly his disappointed glance roved around the circling
thicket--nowhere did it see a sign. When it neared the place of her
concealment the hidden girl ducked, softly, making no undue commotion in
the swiftly running water at the pool's outlet, and the searching
glance passed on, quite unsuspecting, before her breath failed and her
head emerged again.

"Confound it!" the deeply disappointed youth exclaimed. "I was dead
certain I heard something. I _did_ hear something, too." He sighed. "But
it is gone, now."

At length he turned away in a bad temper, and presently she heard him
crashing awkwardly through brush and brake, departing.

Shivering from her long submersion in the gelid waters of the mountain
stream, she cautiously emerged, struggling between light-hearted
laughter at the comedy of her escape and rueful worry about the fact
that she was not only deeply chilled but had no clothes which were not
wet. Her soaked spelling-book, also, gave her much concern. Before she
spread her clothing out in the sparse sunlight, she took the dripping
volume to the warmest little patch of brilliance on any of the rocks
surrounding, and, as she opened its leaves to catch the sunshine,
examined it with loving solicitude to find how badly it was damaged.

"Fast color," she said happily, looking at the mighty letters of its