The Wild Olive

silky touch of the Sorrento rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of what had happened, a

rranged on a table by the wall, and on a desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north

nitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the

. Why was he here? How long was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her father's plan of

then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a woman,

icking in its corners. He ransacked the small dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see, the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor ever occupied for more than a few hours at a tim

onged to be out, where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was convinced that, once in the open, he could elud

shing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the last v

To the west, in a niche between Graytop and the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining

York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of

nd a few seconds later a girl, whom he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest, followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly, carrying a lar

mustn't look out of the window or come to the door. Th

she drew the green curtain hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could catch no glimpse

or of the inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tel

he was standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the

that her dress, though simple, was according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas; and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there wa

ened and she came in again, carrying a plate p

t before him; "but I had to take what I could get-and w

nty of time together; but for the moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood o

shed his meal when

ness, against which she struggled by making her tone as common

itting she laid a pair of slippers, a pa

y, less in surprise

ge Wayne's-" he began to stam

e said, simply. "They're not Judge Wayne's;

she was not Wayne's dau

ther? Is

d to take the things. He would have l

on? Then you

saw that as soon as I chance

e not afra

e admitted; "but th

began to explain, but

day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be painti

e wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its peg and pin

intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a girl-certainly not twenty-and yet she acted with the decision of maturity. At the same time there was about her that s

es. Men spoke to her through the open doorway, a

Micmac with me. I often stay here all day, but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in respons

o had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when, a few minutes later, she

toward the lumber camps. This is your lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into

in whispers, and, having

e whispered back. "Won't

ned him, as she

emed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and l