As the young girl rode back to the hotel she had her reward in a pleasant sensation.  She had done a good deed in helping to console a little child, and no kindness ever goes without this reward.  Besides, she had met a young, strange man, a country boy, it was true, and very plainly dressed, but with the manner and tone of a gentleman, quite good-looking, and very strong.  Strength, mere physical strength, appeals to all girls at certain ages, and Miss Alice Yorke’s thoughts quite softened toward the stranger.  Why, he as good as picked her up!  He must be as strong as Norman Wentworth, who stroked his crew.  She recalled with approval his good shoulders.

She would ask the old Doctor who he was.  He was a pleasant old man, and though her mother and Mrs. Nailor, another New York lady, did not like the idea of his being the only doctor at the Springs, he had been very nice to her.  He had seen her sitting on the ground the day before and had given her his buggy-robe to sit on, saying, with a smile, “You must not sit on the wet ground, or you may fall into my hands.”

“I might do worse,” she had said.  And he had looked at her with his deep eyes twinkling.

“Ah, you young minx!  When do you begin flattering?  And at what age do you let men off?”

When Miss Alice Yorke arrived at the hotel she found her mother and Mrs. Nailor engaged in an animated conversation on the porch.

The girl told of the little child she had found crying in the road, and gave a humorous account of the young countryman trying to put her on her horse.

“He was very good-looking, too,” she declared gayly.  “I think he must be studying for the ministry, like Mr. Rimmon, for he quoted the Bible.”

Both Mrs. Yorke and Mrs. Nailor thought it rather improper for her to be riding alone on the public roads.

The next day Keith put on his best suit of clothes when he went to school, and that afternoon he walked home around the Ridge, as he had done the day before, thinking that possibly he might meet the girl again, but he was disappointed.  The following afternoon he determined to go over to the Springs and see if she was still there and find out who she was.  Accordingly, he left the main road, which ran around the base of the Ridge, and took a foot-path which led winding up through the woods over the Ridge.  It was a path that Gordon often chose when he wanted to be alone.  The way was steep and rocky, and was so little used that often he never met any one from the time he plunged into the woods until he emerged from them on the other side of the Ridge.  In some places the pines were so thick that it was always twilight among them; in others they rose high and stately in the full majesty of primeval growth, keeping at a distance from each other, as though, like another growth, the higher they got the more distant they wished to hold all others.  Trees have so much in common with men, it is no wonder that the ancients, who lived closer to both than we do nowadays, fabled that minds of men sometimes inhabited their trunks.