The Huttig news., 1914-12-05
CHAPTER l.

tatfng before it's descent to the hori- zon. The sugar-loaf cone that tow cred above a creek called Misery was pointed and edged with emerald trac- cry where the loftiest timber thrust up it's crest plumes into the sun. On the hillsides it would be light for more than an hour yet, but below, where the waters tossed themselves along in chorus of tiny cascades, the light was already thickening into cathedral gloom. Down there the fur riner" would have seen only the rough course of the creek between moss yelveted and shaded powders of titanic proportions. The native would have recognized the country road in these tortuous twistings A great block of sandstone, to whose summit a man standing in his saddle could scarcely reach his fingertips, lowered above the stream, with a gnarled scrub oak clinging tenaciously to it's apex. Loft fly on both sides climbed the noun tains eloaked in laurel and timber
 Suddenly the leafage was thrust aside from above by cautious hand, and shy, half-wild girl appeared in the opening For an instant she halt ed, with her brown fingers holding back the brushwood, and raised her face as though listening. As she stood with the toes of one bare foot twisting in the gratefully cool moss she laughed with the sheer exhilara- tion of life and youth, and started out on the table top of the huge rock. But there she halted suddenly with a startled exclamation and drew instinc- lively back. What she saw might well have astonished her, for 1t was thing she had never seen before and of which she had never heard Finally, treasured by the silence she slipped across the broad face of the flat rock for a distance of twenty-five feet and paused again to listen.
 At the far edge lay pair of saddle bags, such as form the only practical equipment for mountain travellers. Near them lay a tin box, filtered with small and notwithstanding tubes of soft metal, all grotesquely twisted and stained, and beside the box was a strangely shaped plaque of wood smeared with dozen hues That this plaque was painters sketching pal cite was thing which she could not know, since the ways of artists had to do with world as remote from her own as the life of the moon or stars It was one of those vague mys- tories that made up the wonderful life of down below" Why had these things been left here in such confu- sion? If there was a man about who owned them he would doubtless return to claim them. She crept over, eyes and ears alert, and slipped around to the front of the queer tripod with all her muscles poised in readiness for flight.
 A half-rapturous and utterly aston ished cry broke from her lips. She stared a moment, then dropped to the moss-covered rock, leaning back on her brown hands and gazing intently.
 Hits purty!" she approved, in low, musical murmur. Hits plumb, dead Deautlful!
 Of course it was not finished pie ture-merely study of what lay be- fore her-but the hand that had placed these brush strokes on the academy board was the sure, delft hand of master of landscape, who had caught the splendid spirit of the thing and fixed it immutably in true and glowing appreciation. Who he was; where he had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and aban- doned, were details which for the mo- ment this half-savage ehild-woman for got to question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the paint box. These were dry, and rep resented the work of other days but they were all pictures of her own mountains, and in each of them, as in this one. was something that made her heart leap.
 To her own people these steep hill sides and "coves" and valleys were a matter of course In their stony soil they labored by day, and in their shad- ows slept when work was done. Yet someone had discovered that they held picturesque and rugged beauty; that they were not merely steep fields where the blow was useless and the hoe must be used She must tell Sam son-Samson, whom she held in an artless exaltation of hero worship; Samson, who was so smart" that he thought about things beyond her un- derstanding; Samson, who could not only read and write but speculate on problematical matters
 Suddenly she came to her feet with swlrt-darting impulse of alarm. Her ear had caught sound She cast searching glances about her, but the tangle was empty of humanity The water still murmured over the rocks undisturbed. There was no sign of human presence, other than herself, that her eyes could discover-and yet to her ears came the sound again. and this time more distinctly. It was the sound of a mans voice. and if was