For hours after leaving her admirer sitting motionless on his horse on the great highway between Monterey and Sacramento, the Girl had indulged in some pertinent thoughts which, if the truth were known, were anything but complimentary to her behaviour.  And, however successful she was later on in persuading herself that he would eventually seek her out, there was no question that at first she felt that the chances of her ever setting eyes on him again were almost negligible.  All the more bitterly, therefore, did she regret her folly in not having told him where she lived; particularly so since she assured herself that not only was he the handsomest man that she had ever seen, but that he was the only one who had ever succeeded in chaining her attention.  That he had been making love to her with his eyes, if not with words, she knew only too well—­a fact that had been anything but displeasing to her.  Indeed, far from having felt sorry that she had encouraged him, she, unblushingly, acknowledged to herself that, if she had the thing to do over again, she would encourage him still more.

Was she then a flirt?  Not at all, in the common acceptation of the word.  All her knowledge of the ways of the world had been derived from Mother Nature, who had supplied her with a quick and ready wit to turn aside, with a smile, the protestations of the boys; had taught her how to live on intimate terms with them and yet not be intimate; but when it came to playing at love, which every city maid of the same age is an adept at, she was strangely ignorant.  Of a truth, then, it was something far broader and deeper that had entered into her heart—­love.  Not infrequently love comes as suddenly as this to young women who live in small mining camps or out-of-the-way places where the men are practically of a type; it is their unfamiliarity with the class which a stranger represents when he makes his appearance in their midst that is responsible, fully as much as his own personality, for their being attracted to him.  It is not impossible, of course, that if the Girl had met him in Cloudy,—­say as a miner there,—­the result would have been precisely the same.  But it is much more likely that the attendant conditions of their meeting aided him in appealing to her imagination, and in touching a chord in her nature which, under other circumstances, would not have responded in as many months as there were minutes on that eventful day.

Little wonder then, that as each succeeding mile travelled by the stage took her further and further away from him, something which, as yet, she did not dare to name, kept tugging at her heartstrings and which she endeavoured to overcome by listening to the stage driver’s long-winded reminiscences and anecdotes concerning the country through which they were passing.  But, although she made a brave effort to appear interested, it did not take him long to realise that something was on his passenger’s mind and, being a wise man, he gradually relapsed into silence, with the result that, before the long journey ended at Cloudy Mountain, she had deceived herself into believing that she was certain to see her admirer again.