"
She turned to go.
"But wait!" he cried, "you haven't told me--will you teach me to know your
mountains as you know them?"
"I'm sure I cannot say," she answered smiling, as she moved away.
"But at least, we will meet again," he urged.
She laughed gaily, "Why not? The mountains are for you as well as for me;
and though the hills _are_ so big, the trails are narrow, and the passes
very few."
With another laugh, she slipped away--her brown dress, that, in the shifty
lights under the thick foliage, so harmonized with the colors of bush and
vine and tree and rock, being so quickly lost to the artist's eye that she
seemed almost to vanish into the scene before him.
But presently, from beyond the willow wall, he heard her voice
again--singing to the accompaniment of the mountain stream. Softly, the
melody died away in the distance--losing itself, at last, in the deeper
organ-tones of the mountain waters.
For some minutes, the artist stood listening--thinking he heard it still.
Aaron King did not, that night, tell Conrad Lagrange of his adventure in
the spring glade.
Chapter XVII
Confessions in the Spring Glade
All the next day, while he worked upon his picture in the glade, Aaron
King listened for that voice in the organ-like music of the distant
waters.
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