coarse black print. "Ain't faded none, nor run, a mite." This plainly
give her great relief. Deftly she turned each leaf, using the extremest
care to avoid tearing them, handling them with loving touch. Between
them she laid little pine cones, so that air might circulate among them
and assist the process of their drying. Then, having wrung her clothing
till her strong, brown, slender wrists ached, she spread that out in
turn, but on less favored rocks, and, as her feeling of security
increased, fell into an unconscious dance, born of the necessity of
warmth from exercise, but so full of grace, abandon, joy, that a poet
might have fancied her a river-nymph, tripping to the reed-born music of
the goat-hoofed Pan.

When, later, she had slowly dressed, and was kneeling at the pool's
edge, using the now placid surface of the water as a mirror to assist
her in rough-fashioning her hair into a graceful knot, she heard again,
from a great distance, a metallic "tink, tink-tink," which had caught
her ear when she had first stood on the pool's edge. It came, she knew,
from far, however, and so did not rouse her apprehension, but, mildly,
it aroused her curiosity.

"Hull kentry's 'full o' furriners," she mused. "That railroad buildin'
business in the valley brings 'em. Woods ain't private no more." Again
the tink, tink-tink. "Sounds like hammerin' on rocks," she thought.
"It's nearer than th' railroad builders, too. I wonder what--but then,
them furriners are wonderful for findin' out concernin' ev'rythin'."

She hugged her pulpy spelling book against her breast with a little
shiver of determination. "_I'm_ goin' to l'arn, too," she said with firm
decision as she scrambled up the rough and rocky mountain path.