Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River, where the saw-dust came to bother him.

He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy, quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones. He liked flies better.

His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little 65 cool yet, for the sun was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up on every side to the rim of the high hills.

Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body, and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap. But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.

Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water, others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in 66 the cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that lesson.

But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool. He was growing big and fat, and a little careless.

As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest, juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once. Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the water!

A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of the water! He had the fly in his mouth.

Then the struggle began.

Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank behind which she had been hiding.

The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through the water like a shot.

The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her 67 strong, slender, boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish.

He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line she could until he should tire a little.

Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth’s hand was cut where she had fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on.

Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and took a new hold on the pole.

The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly.

She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water. It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose him entirely, but she would try it.

Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank. Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her prize was secure.

“It’s you, Twinkle-tail,” she panted, as she held him up for a good look, “sure enough!”

She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and dizzy from her struggle.

Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:

“I wish Jeffrey was here. He’ll never believe it was you unless he sees you.”

“Yes, that’s him all right,” said a voice behind her. “I’d know him in a thousand.”

She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.

“Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn’t be back till to-morrow.”

“Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to,” said Jeffrey, smiling.

“Oh, Jeff, you know I’m glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail,” she hurried on a little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up strategically between them.

“Oh, Fish!” said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by her ruse.

The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down.

“Now tell me,” she commanded, “all about your battle with the railroad people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from yourself.”

But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and said with a show of meanness:

“Ruth, you didn’t catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death brutally. I know you did. You’re always cruel.”

Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged 70 cut in her hand where she had fallen on the rocks.

Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her handkerchief.

“Now,” she said, “tell me.”

“Well,” he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by delay, “the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I wasn’t the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe Gadbeau, you know he’s a kind of a political boss of the French around French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.

“Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he’d been spending money around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well have held my breath. He didn’t care anything about the interests of the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have trouble with that man yet.

“The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, 71 and a good man. They had fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the maddest man you ever saw.

“He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not to sign anything.

“Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn’t find anything in the charges. So I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get me away from here yet.”

“How does it stand now?” said Ruth thoughtfully. “Have they actually started to build the railroad?”

“Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through. But they wouldn’t build it, at least not for years yet, only that they want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole line! 72 The road wouldn’t have business enough to keep the rust off. They’re building the road just the same, so that shows that they intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I suppose they will, somehow,” he added sullenly. “They always do, I guess.”

“But the people,” said Ruth, “can’t you get them all to join and agree to sell at a fair price? Wouldn’t that be all right?”

“They don’t want to buy. They won’t buy at any fair price. They only want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor, and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land.”

“Oh, yes; I remember now. That’s what the Bishop said. Isn’t it strange,” she went on slowly, “how he seems to come into everything we do. How he saved my Daddy Tom’s life that time at Fort Fisher. And how he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems to come into all this.

“Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North,” she went on. “I wonder if he comes into the lives of all the people that way. At the convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more reason to know him 73 than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the same way.”

“He’s just like the Catholic Church,” said Jeffrey suddenly, and a little sharply; “he comes into everything.”

“Why, Jeffrey,” said Ruth in surprise, “what do you know about the Church?”

“I know,” he answered. “I’ve read some. And I’ve had to deal a lot with the French people up toward French Village. And I’ve talked with their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before it’s any use talking to them. That’s the way with the Catholic Church. It comes into everything. I don’t like it.”

He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was turning into a man’s face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.

“It’s all right to be religious,” he went on argumentatively. 74 “Mother’s religious. And Aunt Letty’s just full of it. But it don’t interfere with their lives. It’s all right to have a preacher for marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything. They don’t dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they must say. I don’t like it.”

“Why, Jeffrey, I’m a Catholic!”

“I knew it!” he said stubbornly. “I knew it! I knew there was something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that.”

“That’s funny!” said the girl, breaking in quickly. “When you came I was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same as I was before.”

“But it has changed you,” he persisted. “And it’s going to change you a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth,” he said, suddenly softening, “you won’t let it change you? You won’t let it make any difference, with us, I mean?”

The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:

“No, Jeffrey. It won’t make any difference with us, in the way you mean.

“So long as we are what we are,” she said again after a pause, “we will be just the same to each other. If it should make something different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you would not be the same to me.

“It’s too soon,” she continued decisively. “Nothing is clear to me, yet. I’ve just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I’ll tell you.”

He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something in her face with which he did not dare to argue.

He got up saying:

“I have to be gone. I’m glad I found you here at the old place. I’ll be back to-night to help you eat the trout.”

“Where are you going?”

“Over to Wilbur’s Fork. There’s a couple of men over there that are shaky. I’ve had to keep after them or they’d be listening to Rafe Gadbeau and letting their land go.”

“But,” Ruth exclaimed, “now when they know, can’t they see what is to their own interest! Are they blind?”

“I know,” said Jeffrey dully. “But you know 76 how it is with those people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to scratch and scrape for a little money. They don’t see many dollars together from one year’s end to the other. Even a little money, ready, green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them.”

“Good luck, then, Jeff,” she said cheerily; “and get back early if you can.”

“Sure,” he said easily as he picked up his hat.

“And, say, Ruth.” He turned back quietly to her. “If––if I shouldn’t be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I wouldn’t say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he’s not very sharp sometimes. Will you?”

“Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please.”

“Oh, sure,” he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other side.

Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.

This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had seen it in his face and his talk. 77 He was fighting with a power that he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged struggle.

He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills, anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend their money.

What had Jeffrey to fear?

Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to him.

Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally ruled by their more energetic women. But they 78 or their fathers had all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes, where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.

Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten that she would surely be standing where he had left her?

He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of everything else.

The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.

She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived. Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and good judgment would make for him out of the land.

Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever, in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle.

A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great, seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions, pushing right into the very hills.

She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home.

Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was enough to give Ruth what little money she needed 80 for clothes and to pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished school.

It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and Daddy Tom’s. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.

Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely called “the railroad” would want to take her home and farm away from her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she 81 felt a swelling rage of indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the house, as though she saw it already threatened.

She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding in what had been Ruth’s own flower beds.

“Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!” the woman exclaimed at sight of her. “I called you three times, and when you didn’t answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night.”

“Oh, no,” said Ruth. “No danger. I’m used to getting up early, you see. So I just took some cakes––Didn’t you miss them?––and some milk and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to do it myself this morning.”

“So young Whiting’s gone away, eh?”

“Why, no,” said Ruth quickly. “He went over to Wilbur’s Fork about half an hour ago. Who said he’d gone away?”

“Oh, nobody,” said the woman hastily; “it’s only what they was sayin’ up at French Village yesterday.”

“What were they saying?” Ruth demanded.

“Oh, just talk, I suppose,” Mrs. Apgarth 82 evaded. “Still, I dunno’s I blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he’s got out of it, I’d skedaddle, too.”

Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.

“What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must tell everything now.

“Well,” she began, “they say he’s just fooled the people up over their eyes.”

“How?” said Ruth impatiently. “Tell me.”

“He’s been agoin’ round holdin’ the people back and gettin’ them to swear that they won’t sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin’ the rest of the people back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he’s sold this farm and his own and five other ones that he’d got hold of, for four times what they’re worth. And that gives the railroad enough to work on, so the rest of the people’ll just have to sell for what they can get. He’s gone now; skipped out.”

“But he has not gone!” Ruth snapped out indignantly. “I saw him only half an hour ago.”

“Oh, well, of course,” said the woman knowingly, 83 “you’d know more about it than anybody else. It’s all talk, I suppose.”

Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said shortly:

“I’m going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting.”

“Oh, then, don’t say a word to her about this. She’s an awful good neighbour. I wouldn’t for the world have her think that I––”

“Why, it doesn’t matter at all,” said Ruth, as she turned toward the road. “You only said what people were saying.”

“But I wouldn’t for anything,” the woman called nervously after her, “have her think that–– And what’ll I do with this?”

“Eat it,” said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.

Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come.

She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the long purple shadows of the 84 elm trees on the crest came stalking down in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home.

She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of morning, and the cloud of the night had passed.

She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was eager to answer to his faith.

“Where is Brom Bones?” she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she caught him crossing the yard from the milk house.

“The colt? He’s up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the mountain. What was you calc’latin’ to do with him, Miss?”

“I want to use him,” said Ruth. “May I?”

“Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain’t been driv’ since the Spring’s work. An’ he’s so fat an’ silky he’s liable to act foolish.”

“I’m going to ride him,” said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the horse barn door for a bridle.

“Now, say, Miss,” the man opposed feebly, “you could take the brown pony just as well; I 85 don’t need her a bit. And I tell you that colt is just a lun-at-ic, when he’s been idle so long.”

“Thank you,” said Ruth, as she started up the hill. “But I think I’ll find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day.”

The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse.

She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.

The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better.

He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in a strange saddle. But the girl’s anxiety rose with the excitement of the horse’s wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace.

Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of the boy she loved was in danger!

She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the stony trail that followed Wilbur’s Fork, and the girl’s nerves now keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he had not done so meant that something had stopped him on the way. What was it?

On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along 87 the edge of Wilbur’s Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.

Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once––a single blow at the back of the head––and Jeffrey would have gone stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be even the sign of a struggle.

Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.

“Ruth Lansing,” she scolded aloud, “you’re making a little fool of yourself. You’ve been down there in that convent living among a lot of girls, and you’re forgetting that these hills are your own, that there never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business.”

When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply at the steaming withers 88 of Brom Bones before he would give any attention to her question.

“What’s the tarnation hurry, young lady?” he inquired exasperatingly. “Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest’day. Why?”

“Did he start home by this trail?” asked Ruth eagerly. “Or did he go on up country?”

“He went on up country.”

Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.

“But stay!” the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty yards. “He came back again.”

Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his knees.

“Didn’t ask me that,” the old man chortled, as she came back, “but if I didn’t tell you I reckon you’d run that colt to death up the hills.”

“Then he did take the Forks trail back.”

“Didn’t do that, nuther.”

“Then where did he go? Please tell me!” cried the girl, the tears of vexation rising into her voice.

“Why, what’s the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there,” said the old man, pointing, “and he took over the hill for French Village. You his wife? You’re mighty young.”

But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.

In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on up the stiff slope.

She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the country that way and had no doubt of finding her road.

Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had gone there and, of course, had spent the night there.

By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered that it was Saint John the Baptist’s day. It was not a holy day of obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.

Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass.

The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady 90 whom he seemed to know vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.

“M’m’selle Lansing!” he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove up.

“How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me what time it begins?”

“I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M’m’selle.” Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await her convenience.

He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down deftly.

“I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb,” said Ruth as she took his hand. “Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?”

A girl of about Ruth’s own age had come quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.

“’Cynthe,” said the little man briskly, “you show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass.” He 91 took the bridle from Ruth’s hand and led the horse away to the shed in the rear of the store.

The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not answer?

She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a front pew.

At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth could only catch a little here and there.

“You will come by the fÊte, M’m’selle. You will not dance non, I s’pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one jolie time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance.” Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.

It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before been so devout and concentrated 92 in church should in an instant switch their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into the fun with all her heart.

“Which is Rafe Gadbeau?” she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. “I want to know him.”

“Why for you want to know him?” the girl asked sharply in English.

“Oh, nothing,” said Ruth carelessly, “only I’ve heard of him.”

The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth’s request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately.

“No,” said Ruth, “I do not know how to dance your dances, and we’d only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we’ve heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I’m sure you could tell me if they are true.”

“You don’ dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young Whiting!”

Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly as he led her to a seat.

As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught 93 a swift glance of what she knew was jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get this man to tell her all he would.

“One rascal, I tell you,” repeated Gadbeau. “First he stop all the people. He say don’ sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out. An’ he leave these poor French people in the soup.

“But I”––he sat back tapping himself on the chest––“I got hinfluence with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine o’clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell out everything on the option to him.”

“But,” objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, “if Jeffrey Whiting should come back before then?”

“He don’ come back, that fellow.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, I–– He don’ come back. I tell you that.”

“Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o’clock to-morrow,” she said, turning suddenly upon him.

“Eh? M’m’selle, what you mean? What you know?” he questioned excitedly.

“Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us,” she smiled as she arose, “and I think you are in for a lecture.”

Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.

When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door. When the people rose to sing the Tantum Ergo, she saw Gadbeau slip unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was finished, then she almost ran to the door.

Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street to Arsene LaComb’s store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the man left the Village.

Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him have his head until she 95 again caught sight of the man. She pulled up sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into the trail that led over to Wilbur’s Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur’s Fork. And he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still there.

For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw herself out upon Brom Bones’ neck and caught him by the nose. He threw up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she had heard the pony.

In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly. She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart stopped 96 beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau’s. The other–– It was!–– It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!

She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, why had she not brought a rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably wounded and bound.

She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a prisoner there unless he were hurt.

She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure. He would not stay long.

As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut. Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for Jeffrey to eat. She pulled 97 off the white collar of her jacket, the only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long wait.

First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting beyond the sound of Jeffrey’s voice. She knew where he was now. He might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked appealing for help.

Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily have him there before nine o’clock.

When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not 98 move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion.

Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all night?

Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin. Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.

What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, why had she not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She would, if she had it now, and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding for help, too late!

She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to the taut, ragged nerves of the girl.

The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the bushes.

Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God; a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The words 99 that the night before would not form themselves for her now sprang up ready in her soul––the words of all the children of earth, to Our Father Who Art in Heaven––paused an instant to bless her lips, then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, and anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the Glow of Dawn.

Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the path to his pony.

Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, and called to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was locked with a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. She reached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. She beat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. There was no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Her hands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on the tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herself against the door.

Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnace where they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tied together down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm was broken. For an instant the 100 girl’s heart leaped back to the rage of the night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowed up every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands and loosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth.

“Don’t talk, Jeff,” she commanded. “I can see just what happened. Lie easy and get your strength. I’ve got to take you to French Village at once.”

She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzily on the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water and gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him as she would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and half delirious with pain.

Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He had never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear that he finally gave in.

When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacket into a sling for the boy’s broken arm, and with a prayer to the heathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail.

When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly:

“Say, Ruth, what’s the use trying to save these 101 people? Let’s sell out while we can and take mother and go away.”

“Why, Jeff, dear,” she said lightly, “this fight hasn’t begun yet. Wait till we get to French Village. You’ll say something different. You’ll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North; remember?”

Jeffrey said no more. The girl’s heart was weak with the pain she knew he was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this.

All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country were gathered in front of Arsene Lacomb’s store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing on the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as he thought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speech when he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying a girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, the railroad lawyer beside him, said:

“Go on, man. What’s the matter with you?”

The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his fight again.

“Rogers,” he shouted, “you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you could spread your lies about me. And you’d have 102 won out, too, if it hadn’t been for this brave girl here.

“Now, Rogers, you liar,” he shouted louder, “I dare you, dare you, to tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a foot of land. I dare you!”

Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them and nearly ruined them.

A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved them away and pointed to Jeffrey’s broken arm. They helped him down and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough’s little office.

Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward home, and gave him his head.

For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had learned in the Glow of Dawn.