But, even while she blushed and thrilled with this embarrassment, she
fought to put it from her. He, evidently, had not thought of it at all,
was, now, not thinking of it. What had been done had been a part of the
day's work, a quick move, made in an emergency, when nothing else would
serve. His attitude restored her own composure.

And gratitude welled in her. She struggled to find words for it.

"I--I'm much obleeged to you," were all she found, and she was conscious
of their most complete inadequacy.

"No reason why you should be," he said gayly. "We got caught in a tight
place, that's all, and we helped one another out of it."

She laughed derisively. "I helped _you_ out a lot, now didn't I?" she
asked.

Again she made a survey of him, standing where he had been when he had
loosed his hold of her, unwearied, smiling, and she looked with actual
wonder. Good clothes and careful speech were not, of a necessity, the
outward signs of weaklings, it appeared!

Joe Lorey, in a dozen talks with her, had told her that they were. She
did not understand that this had been a clumsy and short-sighted
strategy, that, finding her more difficult than other mountain
girls--the handsome, sturdy young hill-dweller had not been without his
conquests among the maidens of his kind; only Madge had baffled him--he
had feared that, now when the railroad building in the valley had
brought so many "foreigners" into the neighborhood, one of them might