Cretinism in any form had always shocked Dwight Wade inexpressibly. He turned away, but the old woman was in his path, begging. The next moment a tall, lithe girl ran swiftly out of a hut, seized the whimpering old woman, tossed her over her shoulder as a miller would up-end a bag of meal, and staggered back into the hut, kicking the frail door shut with angry heel. Wade got an astonished but a comprehensive view of this "kidnapper." There was no vacuity in her face. It was brilliant, with black eyes under a tangle of dark hair disordered but not unkempt like that of the females he had seen in Misery. Her lips were very red, and the color flamed on her cheeks above the brown of the tan. In that compost heap of humanity the girl was a vision, and Wade turned to old Christopher with unspoken questions on his parted lips. "Don't know," said the guide, laconically, wagging his head. "No one knows. She's with 'em. But you and me can see that she ain't one of 'em. She's always been with 'em as fur back's I know of her--and that was sixteen years ago, when she was in a holler log on rockers for a cradle." "Stolen!" suggested Wade, desperately. The thought had a morsel of comfort in it. That a girl like that could belong by right of birth in this tribe, that a girl with--ah, now he realized why his heart had throbbed at sight of her--that a girl with Elva Barrett's hair and eyes could be doomed to this existence was a knife-thrust in his sensibilities. And the toss of her head and the rebelliousness in the gesture--the defiance in the upward flash of the sparkling eyes--subdued in Elva Barrett's case by training--the mnemonics of love, whose suggestions are so subtle, thrilled him at the sudden apparition of this forest beauty. Reason angrily rebuked this unbidden comparison. He bit his lips, and flushed as though his swift thought had wronged his love. Old Christopher put into blunt woods phrase the pith of the thoughts that struggled together in Wade's mind. The guide was looking at the closed door. "There's lots of folks, Mr. Wade, that don't recognize plain white birch in some of the things that's polished and set up in city parlors. I've wondered a good many times what a society cabinet-shop, as ye might say, would do to that girl." "They must have stolen her," repeated Wade. Old Christopher tucked a sliver of plug into his cheek.