She turned to go.

“But wait!” he cried, “you haven’t told me—­will you teach me to know your mountains as you know them?”

“I’m sure I cannot say,” she answered smiling, as she moved away.

“But at least, we will meet again,” he urged.

She laughed gaily, “Why not?  The mountains are for you as well as for me; and though the hills are so big, the trails are narrow, and the passes very few.”

With another laugh, she slipped away—­her brown dress, that, in the shifty lights under the thick foliage, so harmonized with the colors of bush and vine and tree and rock, being so quickly lost to the artist’s eye that she seemed almost to vanish into the scene before him.

But presently, from beyond the willow wall, he heard her voice again—­singing to the accompaniment of the mountain stream.  Softly, the melody died away in the distance—­losing itself, at last, in the deeper organ-tones of the mountain waters.

For some minutes, the artist stood listening—­thinking he heard it still.

Aaron King did not, that night, tell Conrad Lagrange of his adventure in the spring glade.

Chapter XVII

Confessions in the Spring Glade

All the next day, while he worked upon his picture in the glade, Aaron King listened for that voice in the organ-like music of the distant waters.  Many times, he turned to search the flickering light and shade of the undergrowth, behind him, for a glimpse of the girl’s brown dress and winsome face.

The next day she came.

The artist had been looking long at a splash of sunlight that fell upon the gray granite boulder which was set in the green turf, and had turned to his canvas for—­it seemed to him—­only an instant.  When he looked again at the boulder, she was standing there—­had, apparently, been standing there for some time, waiting with smiling lips and laughing eyes for him to see her.

A light creel hung by its webbed strap from her shoulder; in her hand, she carried a slender fly rod of good workmanship.  Dressed in soft brown, with short skirts and high laced boots, and her wavy hair tucked under a wide, felt hat; with her blue eyes shining with fun, and her warmly tinted skin glowing with healthful exercise; she appeared—­to the artist—­more as some mythical spirit of the mountains, than as a maiden of flesh and blood.  The manner of her coming, too, heightened the impression.  He had heard no sound of her approach—­no step, no rustle of the underbrush.  He had seen no movement among the bushes—­no parting of the willows in the wall of green.  There had been no hint of her nearness.  He could not even guess the direction from which she had come.

At first, he could scarce believe his eyes, and sat motionless in his surprise.  Then her merry laugh rang out—­breaking the spell.

Springing from his seat, he went forward.  “Are you a spirit?” he cried.  “You must be something unreal, you know—­the way you appear and disappear.  The last time, you came out of the music of the waters, and went again the same way.  To-day, you come out of the air, or the trees, or, perhaps, that gray boulder that is giving me such trouble.”