A master trout leaped.  The hand of the unheeding fisherman felt the tug as the leader broke.  Giving the victorious fish no thought, Aaron King slowly reeled in his line.

There was no mistaking the pure, vibrant tones of the music to which the man listened with amazed delight.  It was the music of the, to him, unknown violinist who lived hidden in the orange grove next door to his studio home in Fairlands.

Chapter XV

The Forest Ranger’s Story

Perhaps the motive that, in Fairlands, had restrained the artist from seeking to know his neighbor was without force in the mountains.  Perhaps it was that, in the unconventional freedom of the hills, the man obeyed more readily his impulse.  Aaron King did not stop to question.  As though in answer to the call of that spirit which spoke in the tones of the violin, he moved in the direction from which the music came.

Climbing out of the bed of the stream to the bench that slopes hack—­a quarter of a mile, perhaps—­to the foot of the canyon wall, he found himself in an old road that, where it once crossed the creek, had been destroyed by the mountain floods.  Wonderingly he followed the dimly marked track that led through the chaparral toward a thicket of cedars, from beyond which the music seemed to come.  Where the road curved to find its way through the green barrier he paused—­the musician, undoubtedly, now, was just beyond.  Still acting upon the impulse of the moment, he cautiously parted the boughs and peered through into a little, open glade that was closed in on every side by the rank growth of the mountain vegetation, by the thicket of dark cedars and by tangled masses of wild rose-bushes.  Opposite the spot where he stood, and half concealed by great sycamore trees, was a small, log house with a thread of blue smoke curling lazily from the chimney.  The place was another of those old ranches that had been purchased by the Power Company and permitted to go back to the wilderness from which it had been won by some hardy settler.  The little plot of open ground—­well sodded with firm turf and short-cropped by roving cattle and deer—­had evidently been, at one time, the front yard of the mountaineer’s home.  A little out from the porch, and in full view of the artist,—­her graceful form outlined against the background of wild roses,—­stood Sibyl Andres with her violin.

As the girl played,—­her winsome face upturned to the mountain heights and her body, lightly poised, swaying with the movement of her arm as easily as a willow bough,—­she appeared, to the man hidden in the cedars, as some beautiful spirit of the woods and hills—­a spirit that would vanish instantly if he should step from his hiding place.  He was so close that he could see her blue eyes, wide and unmindful of her surroundings; her lips, curved in an unconscious smile; and her cheeks, flushed with emotion under their warm brown tint—­as she appeared to listen for the music that she, in turn,—­seemingly with no effort of her will,—­gave forth again in the tones of the instrument under her chin.