of the parley, and, while his master was making up his mind what to do,
he smelled at the stranger's legs. "Well, you can't have any dinner,"
said the boy, tentatively. The dog raised the bristles on his neck, and
showed his teeth with a snarl. The stranger promptly kicked him in the
jaw, and the dog ran off howling. "Come here, sir!" the boy called to
him, but the dog vanished round the house with a fading yelp.

"Now, young man," said the stranger, "will you go and do as you're bid?
I'm ready to pay for my dinner, and you can say so." The boy stared at
him, slowly taking in the facts of his costume, with eyes that climbed
from the heavy shoes up the legs of his thick-ribbed stockings and his
knickerbockers, past the pleats and belt of his Norfolk jacket, to the
red neckcloth tied under the loose collar of his flannel outing-shirt,
and so by his face, with its soft, young beard and its quiet eyes, to the
top of his braidless, bandless slouch hat of soft felt. It was one of the
earliest costumes of the kind that had shown itself in the hill country,
and it was altogether new to the boy. "Come," said the wearer of it,
"don't stand on the order of your going, but go at once," and he sat down
on the steps with his back to the boy, who heard these strange terms of
command with a face of vague envy.

The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of the
mountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms of
the Lion's Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky.
Through the silvery veil there burned here and there on the densely
wooded acclivities the crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time,
but everywhere else there was the unbroken green of the forest, subdued
to one tone of gray. The boy heard the stranger fetch his breath deeply,
and then expel it in a long sigh, before he could bring himself to obey
an order that seemed to leave him without the choice of disobedience. He