hence it was not long before he obtained it without reserve. As she
walked beside him, grave and alert, she no longer thought of his
bushy beard and prodigious mop of harsh hair; and the daily
exhibition of his strength caused him to grow handsome in her eyes
because most of those feats were performed for her comfort or
pleasure. In the meantime he talked incessantly, and to his
admiration, he presently found her manner of speech wonderfully like
his own, both fluent and ungrammatical.

He knew nothing of grammar, to be sure, but there were times when
his mistakes, echoed from her lips, struck upon his ear, and though
he might not always know how to correct them, he was prompt to
suggest changes, testing each, as a natural musician judges music,
by ear. Dissatisfied with his own standards, he was all the more
impatient to depart on the expedition after mental tools, despite
the dangers that might beset the journey.

His first task prompted by the coming of Lahoma, had been to
partition off the half of the dugout containing the stove for the
child's private chamber. Cedar posts set in the ground and
plastered with mud higher than his head, left a space between the
top and the apex of the ceiling that the temperature might be
equalized in both rooms. Thus far, however, they did not stay in
the dugout except long enough to eat and sleep, for the autumn had
continued delightful, and the cove seemed to the child her home, of
which the dugout was a sort of cellar. Concerning the stone retreat
in the crevice she knew nothing. Willock did not know why he kept
the secret, since he trusted Lahoma with all his treasures, but the
unreasoning reticence of the man of great loneliness still rested
on him. Some day, he would tell--but not just yet.