rustic maiden. He wondered just how serious his attentions to fair
Barbara had been thought to be by her, her father, Horace Holton, and by
other people. There were many things about Madge Brierly, which, as he
sat there, reflective, he found admirable, besides her vivid, vigorous
young beauty. He could not bring himself, as he sat thinking of the two
girls, widely separated as they were in the great social plane, unevenly
matched as they had been in early training, to admit that the whole
advantage was upon the side of Barbara Holton.

And above him, in her lonely little cabin on the towering rock, upon all
sides of which the mountain-torrent, making it an isle of safety for her
there in the wilderness, roared rythmically, the mountain maiden who so
occupied his thoughts was busy with her crude wardrobe.

In complete dissatisfaction she put aside, at length, every garment of
her own which she possessed as unsuitable for the great day when she was
to meet the bluegrass gentlefolk.

Then, remembering suddenly an old chest which held her mother's wedding
finery, she strained her fine young muscles as she dragged it out of
storage; and sitting on the floor beside it where the great blaze of
pine-knots in the big "mud-and-broke-rock" fireplace lighted it and her
with flickering brilliance, she went through it with reverent fingers,
searching, searching for such garments and such adornments as it might
hold to make her fit to meet the friends of the young lowlander who had
captured her imagination with his bravery, resource and courtesy.

There were a few things in the chest which pleased her, and she smiled
as she discovered them, smiled as she tried them on, smiled as she saw
the image wearing them in the cracked mirror by the side of the big