The plain, brief recital stirred me, and awoke within me a wondering interest. Gran'fer's head was low now, so low that the hair on his chin spread out fanlike over his faded, checked shirt. His hand had ceased its caressing movement, and lay above the other. I could see that each had a slight palsied motion. The little bent figure at my side struck me as infinitely pathetic just then. Dull indeed must I have been not to have sensed the shadow of some dire tragedy occurring in the years he had mentioned. For a number of days past vague imaginings and sundry conjectures had come to vex my mind with their unsatisfying presence. I had known for some time that Lessie was not all she seemed, and now, this moment, I stood on the borderland of enlightenment. Unfamiliar thrills shot through me, flame tipped and eager. My heart pounded oddly, and my eyelids were hot against the balls. Instantly a thought had sprung full-born into existence, and it was the acceptance of this thought which sent that tingling, vibrating current shooting throughout my entire being. Where did Lessie get her refined features? Where the instinct to care scrupulously for her person? Where that mute, painful longing for something she could not name? From generation after generation of ox-minded hill folk? Impossible! From them came her wonderful simplicity, her extreme naturalness, her kinship with the wild places and the things which dwelt there. But--I felt now as if a force pump was connected with my chest, and that any moment it might burst asunder. Dare I ask Gran'fer? Dare I, almost a total stranger, intrude here, and seek to pry behind the veil these old people had drawn between their grandchild and the world? I resolved to make the effort, but with great caution, feeling my way with carefully chosen words. I did not want to offend, but the desire to know the truth about the Dryad was all but overpowering. It was not vulgar, idle curiosity. For I knew the deeps were stirred; that underlying all else was the strange, full throbbing of a new force. So I put a hand on the old man's sagging shoulder in friendly way, and said, speaking softly-- "And is Lessie's father--" I got no further. It was as though I had put him in contact with a live wire. His drooping body straightened, his boot heels clicked against the face of the stone, and his stiffened arms shot over his head.