The boy stopped midway in his perilous transit, and, looking down upon
the horseman, responded, coolly, "Hullo, yourself!"

"Is that the only way across this infernal hole, or the one you prefer
for exercise?" continued Hamlin, gravely.

The boy sat down on a bough, allowing his bare feet to dangle over the
dizzy depths, and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on this
occasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful
combination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringed
trousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing
and picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply.
Mr. Hamlin's pride in his usual ascendency over women, children, horses,
and all unreasoning animals was deeply nettled. He smiled, however, and
said, quietly,--

"Come here, George Washington. I want to talk to you."

Without rejecting this august yet impossible title, the boy presently
lifted his feet, and carelessly resumed his passage across the
chasm until, reaching the sycamore, he began to let himself down
squirrel-wise, leap by leap, with an occasional trapeze swinging from
bough to bough, dropping at last easily to the ground. Here he appeared
to be rather good-looking, albeit the sun and air had worked a miracle
of brown tan and freckles on his exposed surfaces, until the mottling of
his oval cheeks looked like a polished bird's egg. Indeed, it struck Mr.
Hamlin that he was as intensely a part of that sylvan seclusion as
the hidden brook that murmured, the brown velvet shadows that lay like
trappings on the white flanks of his horse, the quivering heat, and the
stinging spice of bay. Mr. Hamlin had vague ideas of dryads and fauns,