“We've powerful good water,” his host had said in the afternoon, “'n' it's nigh the house, too. I built the house yer a-purpose,--on 'count of its be-in' nigh.” He was unconsciously dwelling upon this statement as he walked, and trying to recall correctly the mountain drawl and twang. “She,” he said (there was only one “she” for him to-night)--“she will be sure to catch it and reproduce it in all its shades to the life.” He was only a few feet from the spring itself and he stopped with a sharp exclamation of the most uncontrollable amazement,--stopped and stared straight before him. It was a pretty, dell-like place, darkly shadowed on one side but bathed in the flooding moonlight on the other, and it was something he saw in this flood of moonlight which almost caused him to doubt for the moment the evidence of his senses. How it was possible for him to believe that there really could stand in such a spot a girl attired in black velvet of stagy cut and trimmings, he could not comprehend; but a few feet from him there certainly stood such a girl, who bent her lithe, round shape over the spring, gazing into its depths with all the eagerness of an insatiable vanity. “I can't see nothing” he heard her say impatiently. “I can't see nothin' nohow.” Despite the beauty, his first glance could not help showing him she was a figure so incongruous and inconsistent as to be almost _bizarre_. When she stood upright revealing fully her tall figure in its shabby finery, he felt something like resentment. He made a restive movement which she heard. The bit of broken looking-glass she held in her hand fell into the water, she uttered a shamefaced angry cry. “What d'ye want?” she exclaimed. “What are ye a-doin'? I didn't know as no one was a-lookin'. I”-- Her head was flung backward, her full throat looked like a pillar of marble against the black edge of her dress, her air was fierce. He would not have been an artist if he had not been powerfully struck with a sense of her picturesqueness. But he did not smile at all as he answered:-- “I board at the house there. I returned home late and was thirsty. I came here for water to drink.” Her temper died down as suddenly as it had flamed, and she seemed given up to a miserable, shamed trepidation. “Oh,” she said, “don't ye tell 'em--don't--I--I'm Dusk Dunbar.” Then, as was very natural, he became curious and possibly did smile--a very little. “What in the name of all that is fantastic are you doing?” She made an effort at being defiant and succeeded pretty well. “I wasn't doin' no harm,” she said. “I was--dressin' up a bit. It aint nobody's business.” “That's true,” he answered coolly. “At all events it is not mine--though it is rather late for a lady to be alone at such a place. However, if you have no objection, I will get what I came for and go back.” She said nothing when he stepped down and filled the gourd, but she regarded him with a sort of irritable watchfulness as he drank.