Anglo-Saxon words, and he soon fell into many of the quaint
expressions of the mountaineers and their odd, slow way of
speech. This course was effective, and in time the shyness wore
away and left between them a comradeship as pleasant as unique.
Sometimes they took long walks together on the mountains. This
was contrary to mountain etiquette, but they were remote even
from the rude conventionalities of the life below them. They even
went hunting together, and Easter had the joy of a child when she
discovered her superiority to Clayton in woodcraft and in the use
of a rifle. If he could tell her the names of plants and flowers they
found, and how they were akin, she could show him where they
grew. If he could teach her a little more about animals and their
habits than she already knew, he had always to follow her in the
search for game. Their fellowship was, in consequence, never
more complete than when they were roaming the woods. In them
Easter was at home, and her ardent nature came to the surface like
a poetic glow from her buoyant health and beauty. Then appeared
all that was wayward and elfin-like in her character, and she would
be as playful, wilful, evanescent as a wood-spirit. Sometimes,
when they were separated, she would lead him into a ravine by
imitating a squirrel or a wild-turkey, and, as he crept noiselessly
along with bated breath and eyes peering eagerly through the
tree-tops or the underbrush, she would step like a dryad from
behind some tree at his side, with a ringing laugh at his
discomfiture. Again, she might startle him by running lightly
along the fallen trunk of a tree that lay across a torrent, or, in a
freak of wilfulness, would let herself down the bare face of some
steep cliff. If he scolded her, she laughed. If he grew angry, she
was serious instantly, and once she fell to weeping and fled home.
He followed her, but she barricaded herself in her room in the loft,