late afternoon, having saved Eleanor's hands in every possible way, she
left them, and thinking, without the slightest rancor, of the rough
bliss she was not asked to share, went running down the mountain with
Rover at her heels.

Eleanor, wondering at her willingness to take that long road home with
only the lumbering old dog for company, was intensely glad to have her
go.

"Girls of that age are so uninteresting," she told Maurice; "and now
we'll be all by ourselves!"

"Yes; Adam and Eve," he said; "and twilight; and the world spread out
like a garden! Do you see that glimmer over there to the left? That's
the beginning of the river--our river!"

He had made her comfortable with some cushions piled against the trunk
of a tree, and lighted a fire in a ring of blackened stones; then he
brought her her supper, and ate his own on his knees beside her,
watching eagerly for ways to serve her, laughing because she cringed
when, from an overhanging bough, a spider let himself down upon her
skirt, and hurrying to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, because an
unhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward he
would not let her "hurt her hands" by washing the dishes. When this was
over, and the dusk was deepening, he went into the woods to the
"lean-to" in which Lion was quartered, to see that the old horse was
comfortable, but a minute later came crashing back through the
underbrush, laughing, but provoked.

"That imp, Edith, didn't hitch him securely, and the old fellow has