"Why, he had me that stirred up," said she, "that I reckoned I was rich
a'ready!"

But she put the joke aside, to be told upon herself when the first
chance came. Her long hiding in the thicket while she watched the queer
proceedings of the stranger had chilled her through and through.

Close to the black rock which had so excited him and which she had
uncovered after he had gone, a little forked stick stood upright, and in
its fork, with one end slanted to the ground, a twig of green
witch-hazel still reposed. Beneath the twig a tiny spiral of arizing
smoke showed that here, with these primitive appliances, the treasure
seeker had prepared his dinner, later carefully covering his fire.

"No matter how queer he was dressed, or what queer things he did," she
told herself, "he sure was mountain-born. This here's a mountain
fireplace, sartin sure."

She broke dead branches from a pine-top, not far away, but still far
enough so that, with reasonable watching, it would not be endangered by
a fire built on this spot (the old man plainly had considered this when
he made the fire, for the place was almost the only one in all the
clearing free enough from dry pine branches to make fire building safe)
and laid them on the coals which he had buried, but which she now had
carefully uncovered. She would, she had decided, dry her clothes before
she started on the long, cool, woods-road climb up to her cabin.

Kneeling by the coals and blowing on them, skillfully adjusting
splinters so that they would catch the draft, she soon had started a
small flame. Fed carefully, this grew rapidly. Within five minutes there