his sojourn there had been considered rather foolish by his friends, but
he had wished to make quite sure that what was said about the wild
mountain lands which formed the greater portion of his patrimony--that
they were practically valueless--was true, ere he gave up all hope of
profiting from them.

The building of the railroad through the valley had imbued him with some
hope that they might not prove to be as useless as they had been thought
to be, and it had been that which had induced him, at the start, to make
the journey.

Once arrived he had found the mountain air delightful, the fishing fine,
the shooting all that could be wished, and had enjoyed these to their
full, investigating, meanwhile, his rough property; but as he lay there
in his shack of logs and puncheons he acknowledged to himself that it
was none of these things which now made the mountains so attractive. It
was the nymph of the woods pool, the mountain-side Europa on her bull,
his little pupil of the alphabet, in plain reality, who now held him to
the wilderness.

He wondered just what this could mean. Could it be possible that he was
thinking seriously of the little maid _in that way_?

He almost laughed at the idea, there alone in the woods cabin, with the
stars in their deep velvet canopy twinkling through the window at him
and the glow of his cob pipe for company.

But his laugh was not too genuine. He found himself, to his amazement,
comparing Madge, the mountain girl, with Barbara Holton, the elegant
daughter of the lowlands, and finding many points in favor of the little