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“Thet thar’s a purty dress you’re a-wearin’,” she vouchsafed at length.

Rebecca glanced down at her costume. Being a sensible young person, she had attired herself in apparel suitable for mountain rambling. Her dress was simple pilgrim gray, taut made and trim; but she never lost an air of distinction which rendered abundant adornments a secondary matter.

“It is very plain,” she answered. “I believe its chief object; is to be as little in the way as possible.”

“Taint much trimmed,” responded the girl, “but it looks kinder nice, ‘n’ it sets well. Ye come from the city, Mis’ Harney says.”

“From New York,” said Rebecca. She felt sure that she saw in the tawny brown depths of the girl’s eyes a kind of secret eagerness, and this expressed itself openly in her reply.

“I don’t blame no one fur wantin’ to live in a city,” she said, with a kind of discontent. “A body might most as soon be dead as live this way.”

Rebecca gave her a keen glance. “Don’t you like the quiet?” she asked. “What is it you don’t like?”

“I don’t like nothin’ about it,” scornfully. “Thar’s nothin’ here.”

Very slowly a lurking, half-hidden smile showed itself about her fine mouth.

“I’m not goin’ to stay here allers,” she said.

“You want to go away?” said Rebecca.

She nodded.

“I am goin’,” she answered, “some o’ these days.”

“Where?” asked Rebecca, a little coldly, recognizing as she did a repellant element in the girl.

The reply was succinct enough:–

“I don’t know whar, ‘n’ I don’t keer whar–but I’m goin’.”

She turned her eyes toward the great wall of forest-covered mountain, lifting its height before the open door, and the blood showed its deep glow upon her cheek.

“Some o’ these days,” she added; “as shore as I’m a woman.”

When they talked the matter over afterward, Miss Thorne’s remarks were at once decided and severe.

“Shall I tell you what my opinion is, Rebecca?” she said. “It is my opinion that there is evil enough in the creature to be the ruin of the whole community. She is bad at the core.”

“I would rather believe,” said Rebecca, musingly, “that she was only inordinately vain.” Almost instantaneously her musing was broken by a light laugh. “She has dressed her hair as I dress mine,” she said, “only it was done better. I could not have arranged it so well. She saw it last night and was quick enough to take in the style at a glance.”

At the beginning of the next week there occurred an event which changed materially the ordinary routine of life in the cabin. Heretofore the two sojourners among the mountain fastnesses had walked and climbed under the escort of a small tow-headed Harney. But one evening as she sat sketching on her favorite flat seat of rock, Miss Noble somewhat alarmed this youth by dropping her paper and starting to her feet.

“Orlander” Harney sat and stared at her with black eyes and opened mouth. The red came and went under her fair skin, and she breathed quickly.

“Oh,” she cried softly, “how could I be mistaken!”

That she was not mistaken became evident immediately. At the very moment she spoke, the advancing horseman, whose appearance had so roused her, glanced upward along the path and caught sight of her figure. He lifted his hat in gay greeting and struck his horse lightly with his whip. Rebecca bent down and picked up her portfolio.

“You may go home,” she said quietly to the boy. “I shall be there soon; and you may tell Miss Thorne that Mr. Lennox has come.” She was at the base of the rock when the stranger drew rein. “How is this?” she asked with bright uplifted eyes. “We did not think”–

It occurred to Lennox that he had never recognized her peculiar charm so fully as he did at this moment. Rebecca Noble, though not a beauty, possessed a subtle grace of look and air which was not easily resisted,–and just now, as she held out her hand, the clear sweetness of her face shadowed by her piquantly plain hat of rough straw, he felt the influence of this element more strongly than ever before.