“May I stay here by the fire with you a while and get warm, too,” he asked. (The unaccustomed exercise of tramping through the mountains had kept him in a fever heat all day.)

“An’ welcome,” she said cordially, moving aside a bit, so that he could approach without the circumnavigation of a mighty stump.

He could not tell whether or not she had made note of many sweat-beads on his brow and wondered at them on a chilly man.

“Perhaps,” said he, “I might, in a few minutes, show you a little about what you want to know.  I’ve been lucky.  I have had a chance to learn.”

She liked the way he said it.  There was no hint of superiority about it.  He was not “stuck up,” in his claim of knowledge.  He “had had a chance,” and took no credit to himself for it.  This pleased her, won her confidence—­if, already, that had not been done by his frank face, in spite of his fancy clothes and her assumption that he was a namby-pamby weakling.

“Oh—­if you would!” she said, so eagerly that it seemed to him most pitiful.

So, five minutes later, when all her clothing save her heavy outer skirt, had been quite dried there by the fire, and that same fire’s abounding warmth had sent his temperature up to high discomfort mark, they sat down, side by side, upon a log, the spelling-book between them, and he began the pleasant task of teaching her her A, B, Cs.

“‘A,’” said he, “is this one at the very start.”

“The peaked one,” said she.

“Yes, that one.

“And ‘B,’” he went on, much amused, but with a perfectly grave face, “is this one with two loops fastened, so, to a straight stalk.”

“I know where thar is a bee-tree,” she remarked, irrelevantly.

“It will help recall this in your mind,” said he, maintaining perfect gravity, “imagine it with two big loops of rope fastened to one side of it—­”

“Rope wouldn’t stick out that-a-way,” said she, “it would just droop.  They’d have to be of somethin’ stiffen”

“Well—­” said he, and tried to think of something.

“You could use that railroad-iron that I saw ’em heat red-hot an’ bend, down in the valley,” she suggested.

“That’s it,” said he.  “Two loops of railroad-iron fastened to a bee-tree” (he pointed) “just as these loops, here, are fastened to the straight black stem.  That’s ‘B.’”

“I won’t forget,” said she, her beautiful young brow puckered earnestly as she stored the knowledge in her brain.

“And this is ‘C,’” said he.

“‘C,’ ‘C’” said she.  “Jest take off one of th’ loops an’ use it by itself.”

“That’s so,” said he.  “And here is ‘D’”

“Cut off th’ top th’ tree,” said she.  “Just cut it plumb off, loop an’ all.”

He laughed.  It was clear that she would be an earnest and quick-thinking pupil to whomever had the task of giving her her education.