“Good-by,” faltered the little girl, and she watched him ride down the creek and disappear, and her tears came only when she felt the old woman’s arms around her.

“Don’t you mind, honey.”

Over ridge and mountain and up and down the rocky beds of streams jogged Jason’s old nag for two days until she carried him to the top of the wooded ridge whence he looked down on the little mountain town and the queer buildings of the settlement school.  Half an hour later St. Hilda saw him cross the creek below the bridge, ride up to the foot-path gate, hitch his old mare, and come straight to her where she sat—­in a sturdy way that fixed her interest instantly and keenly.

“I’ve come over hyeh to stay with ye,” he said simply.

St. Hilda hesitated and distress kept her silent.

“My name’s Jason Hawn.  I come from t’other side o’ the mountain an’ I hain’t got no home.”

“I’m sorry, little man,” she said gently, “but we have no place for you.”

The boy’s eyes darted to one side and the other.

“Shucks!  I can sleep out thar in that woodshed.  I hain’t axin’ no favors.  I got a leetle money an’ I can work like a man.”

Now, while St. Hilda’s face was strong, her heart was divinely weak and Jason saw it.  Unhesitatingly he climbed the steps, handed his rifle to her, sat down, and at once began taking stock of everything about him—­the boy swinging an axe at the wood-pile, the boy feeding the hogs and chickens; another starting off on an old horse with a bag of corn for the mill, another ploughing the hill-side.  Others were digging ditches, working in a garden, mending a fence, and making cinder paths.  But in all this his interest was plainly casual until his eyes caught sight of a pile of lumber at the door of the workshop below, and through the windows the occasional gleam of some shining tool.  Instantly one eager finger shot out.

“I want to go down thar.”

Good-humoredly St. Hilda took him, and when Jason looked upon boys of his own age chipping, hewing, planing lumber, and making furniture, so busy that they scarcely gave him a glance, St, Hilda saw his eyes light and his fingers twitch.

“Gee!” he whispered with a catch of his breath, “this is the place fer me.”

But when they went back and Jason put his head into the big house, St. Hilda saw his face darken, for in there boys were washing dishes and scrubbing floors.

“Does all the boys have to do that?” he asked with great disgust.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Jason turned abruptly away from the door, and when he passed a window of the cottage on the way back to her cabin and saw two boys within making up beds, he gave a grunt of scorn and derision and he did not follow her up the steps.

“Gimme back my gun,” he said.

“Why, what’s the matter, Jason?”

“This is a gals’ school—­hit hain’t no place fer me.”