And then she made a pun, unconscious of what the outer world calls such
things, but quite conscious of its humor. "Thought I was a b'ar," she
chuckled. "Well, I certainly _was_ b'ar!"

Feeling no further fear of any one, defiant, now that she was fully
clothed, of "furriners," rather hoping, as a matter of fact that she
might sometime meet this one again, she let her laugh ring out
unrestrained. A cat-bird answered it with a harsh cry; a blue-jay
answered him with a still harsher note. But then a brown thrush burst
into unaccustomed post-meridian song. Even his throbbing trills and
thrilling, liquid quaverings, had not more melody in them, however, than
had her ringing laughter.




CHAPTER II


Her laugh, too, roused more than vagrant birds into attention. She had
emerged from the abrupt little valley and was entering upon a plateau
which had been left comparatively open by the removal of great trees,
sacrificed to furnish ties for the new railroad building in the
lowlands. The place was littered with the discarded tops of pines and
other woodland rubbish and seemed forlorn and wrecked. She swept her
eyes about with the glance of a proprietor, for Madge Brierly owned all
of this as well as most of the land through which the brook which
deepened into the pool of her adventure flowed. Indeed the girl was
counted rich among her fellows and owned, also, land down in the valley
on which she would not live, but which she rented for an annual sum to