quite blistered her fingers doing it.  Then she neatly covered these improvised vases with the Manila paper from the groceries, tying it with wisps of marshgrass.  These she filled with fringed gentians, blazing-star, asters, goldenrod, and ferns, placing them the length of the dining-table.  In one of the end cans she arranged her red leaves, and in the other the fancy grass.  Two men, watching her, went away proud of themselves and said that she was “a born lady.”  She laughingly caught up a paper bag and fitted it jauntily to her head in imitation of a cook’s cap.  Then she ground the coffee, and beat a couple of eggs to put in, “because there is company,” she gravely explained to the cook.  She asked that delighted individual if he did not like it best that way, and he said he did not know, because he never had a chance to taste it.  The Angel said that was her case exactly—­she never had, either; she was not allowed anything stronger than milk.  Then they laughed together.

She told the cook about camping with her father, and explained that he made his coffee that way.  When the steam began to rise from the big boiler, she stuffed the spout tightly with clean marshgrass, to keep the aroma in, placed the boiler where it would only simmer, and explained why.  The influence of the Angel’s visit lingered with the cook through the remainder of his life, while the men prayed for her frequent return.

She was having a happy time, when McLean came back jubilant, from his trip to the tree.  How jubilant he told only the Angel, for he had been obliged to lose faith in some trusted men of late, and had learned discretion by what he suffered.  He planned to begin clearing out a road to the tree that same afternoon, and to set two guards every night, for it promised to be a rare treasure, so he was eager to see it on the way to the mills.

“I am coming to see it felled,” cried the Angel.  “I feel a sort of motherly interest in that tree.”

McLean was highly amused.  He would have staked his life on the honesty of either the Angel or Freckles; yet their versions of the finding of the tree differed widely.

“Tell me, Angel,” the Boss said jestingly.  “I think I have a right to know.  Who really did locate that tree?”

“Freckles,” she answered promptly and emphatically.

“But he says quite as positively that it was you.  I don’t understand.”

The Angel’s legal look flashed into her face.  Her eyes grew tense with earnestness.  She glanced around, and seeing no towel or basin, held out her hand for Sears to pour water over them.  Then, using the skirt of her dress to dry them, she climbed on the wagon.

“I’ll tell you, word for word, how it happened,” she said, “and then you shall decide, and Freckles and I will agree with you.”

When she had finished her version, “Tell us, ‘oh, most learned judge!’” she laughingly quoted, “which of us located that tree?”