north-west part of the State."

"Isn't it in the oil-regions?" groped Mr. Arbuton.

"Why, the oil-regions are rather migratory, you know. It used to be in
the oil-regions; but the oil was pumped out, and then the oil-regions
gracefully withdrew and left the cheese-regions and grape-regions to
come back and take possession of the old derricks and the rusty boilers.
You might suppose from the appearance of the meadows, that all the
boilers that ever blew up had come down in the neighborhood of
Eriecreek. And every field has its derrick standing just as the last
dollar or the last drop of oil left it."

Mr. Arbuton brought his fancy to bear upon Eriecreek, and wholly failed
to conceive of it. He did not like the notion of its being thrust within
the range of his knowledge; and he resented its being the home of Miss
Ellison, whom he was beginning to accept as a not quite comprehensible
yet certainly agreeable fact, though he still had a disposition to cast
her off as something incredible. He asked no further about Eriecreek,
and presently she rose and went to join her relatives, and he went to
smoke his cigar, and to ponder upon the problem presented to him in this
young girl from whose locality and conjecturable experiences he was at
loss how to infer her as he found her here.

She had a certain self-reliance mingling with an innocent trust of
others which Mrs. Isabel March had described to her husband as a charm
potent to make everybody sympathetic and good-natured, but which it
would not be easy to account for to Mr. Arbuton. In part it was a
natural gift, and partly it came from mere ignorance of the world; it
was the unsnubbed fearlessness of a heart which did not suspect a sense