gone by, extended quite from bank to bank, moss-covered, half hidden by small rushes and a little group of other water-plants.  She dived beneath this log with the last atom of endurance she possessed and rose, perforce, upon the other side, stifling her gasps, but drawing in the air in long, luxurious breathings.  With her mouth not more than half-an-inch above the water and her feet upon hard bottom, she crouched there, watching through the screen of plants, her clothes and book still pressed against her breast.

As she peered across the log between the rushes, she saw the stranger, with a wary step, break through the undergrowth about the pool—­cautiously, expectantly.  The water heaved a bit about her chin, for her hidden chest was palpitating with the short, sharp intakes of a chuckling laughter.

“Thought I were a b’ar, most likely!” she thought merrily, quite certain of the safety of her hiding place.  “Some furriner.”  All strangers, in the mountains, are spoken of as “foreigners” and regarded with a hundred times the wonder and distrust shown in cities to the native of far lands, remote.

Her guess was shrewd.  The stranger had plainly been attracted by the sounds of her delighted splashing and had hurried up with rifle ready for a shot at some big game.  Now he stood upon the granite edges of the pool, disappointed even in his instinctive search for footprints, with only the slowly widening circles left upon the surface by her hurried flight to show him that he had not wholly been mistaken in his thought that something most unusual had recently occurred there in the “cove.”  Eagerly his disappointed glance roved around the circling thicket—­nowhere did it see a sign.  When it neared the place of her concealment the hidden girl ducked, softly, making no undue commotion in the swiftly running water at the pool’s outlet, and the searching glance passed on, quite unsuspecting, before her breath failed and her head emerged again.

“Confound it!” the deeply disappointed youth exclaimed.  “I was dead certain I heard something.  I did hear something, too.”  He sighed.  “But it is gone, now.”

At length he turned away in a bad temper, and presently she heard him crashing awkwardly through brush and brake, departing.

Shivering from her long submersion in the gelid waters of the mountain stream, she cautiously emerged, struggling between light-hearted laughter at the comedy of her escape and rueful worry about the fact that she was not only deeply chilled but had no clothes which were not wet.  Her soaked spelling-book, also, gave her much concern.  Before she spread her clothing out in the sparse sunlight, she took the dripping volume to the warmest little patch of brilliance on any of the rocks surrounding, and, as she opened its leaves to catch the sunshine, examined it with loving solicitude to find how badly it was damaged.