“This here is Grace Morton, Fess,” remarked the dry young voice of Mamie Hunter. “She’s come to stay with me a spell. Lives down to Malone, and ain’t very well.” During this elaborate introduction Fessenden was gazing into the soft black eyes of the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her hair was dark, her features fragile and regular; she wore a black frock and a red-peaked cap, red about her throat and tiny waist. Her complexion was sickly, her figure might have been that of the last woman, but Fessenden saw no defects. Neither did he recognize the vacant, the utterly commonplace mind that looked from that sweet unchanging face. She was a little beauty in her way, and wholly unlike the buxom rough-handed girls of his district; there pervaded her that neutral refinement which nature has lavished with such a curious lack of discrimination upon all classes in the United States; and to Fessenden, who had never seen even a village, she seemed city-bred and fashionable. She blushed under his devouring gaze, and then she looked like a wild rose of the woods; one barrier fell. She raised her eyes and glanced vaguely round. “I’ve never seen the sap running before,” she remarked. “It looks real nice. Is it sweet like what we eat on cakes?” “You goose!” exclaimed Miss Hunter. “It’s got to be boiled down first--the water boiled out of it; not that it’s so bad now.” Fessenden had produced a tin cup and filled it with the running liquid. “Will you taste it?” he asked hoarsely. She took the cup from him, and their fingers met. He trembled. She did not, and tasted the sap daintily. “Well, I like it,” she announced. “It’s real refreshing, and we had a long walk over here. I never walked so far before, and I’m all tuckered out. I guess I’ll sit down.”