When he had been with the outfit for three weeks Conniston began to feel confident that he could perform the part of the day’s work which was allotted to him.  His muscles had begun to harden so that they no longer ached and throbbed day and night.

Then one morning he saw Argyl Crawford.  He had begun of late to tell himself that he had invested her in his imagination with a charm which was not hers; that after the studied neglect that he had sustained at her hands and at her father’s hands he was going to forget all about her.  And now, as she came unexpectedly out of the circle of trees, pausing upon a little grassy knoll just where his idle eyes were resting, where the early sun found her out, making her a thing of light against the dull-green background, Conniston caught his breath and told himself that she was in reality the queen of this land of enchantment.

She came out of the forest as a mountain Naiad might have done, her beauty a glorious, wonderful thing, her grace the free, lithe, unconscious grace of the wild things of this country of hers, swift-footed, firm-footed, and, it seemed to the man who watched her, with a sort of shyness which belongs to the creature of the woodlands.  As she paused, her hands at her sides, her head lifted with tip-tilted chin, unconscious that any one saw her, not seeing the man who squatted by the spring below the bunk-house, he felt vaguely as though he were looking upon a nymph who, if he so much as moved, would turn swiftly and flash away from him into the depths of her shadowy forest.

Having no desire to be seen just then, Conniston sat very still.  The other boys were breakfasting within the bunk-house.  He had hurried with his meal, and now was washing a pair of socks.  He had no wish to have her see him doing this sort of work.  He moved slightly so that the little clump of willows near the spring stood like a screen between them.

He remembered suddenly that he had not had a shave for four days.

Rawhide Jones, Toothy, and Brayley came out of the bunk-house together.  They all saw her and as one man lifted their broad-brimmed hats.  She called to Brayley, and as the others went down to the stable he walked, lurching, to her.  Conniston could not hear what she was saying, but Brayley’s heavier voice came to him distinctly.  The girl was asking something, and Brayley after a moment’s thought agreed to her request.  She turned, smiling at him and thanking him, and went back through the trees toward the house.  The big foreman came back to the bunk-house.  Conniston, his socks washed and now dripping, turned away from the stream and came to the clothes-line running from the corner of the low building to a tree sixty feet away.

“Hey, you, Conniston,” Brayley called to him.  “You’re jest the man I’m lookin’ for.  Saddle Dandy for Miss Argyl an’ take him up to the house for her.  An’ take your own hoss along.  She wants you to go with her.”