This, then, was Mary's first meeting with Miss Woppit. Not particularly encouraging to a renewal of the acquaintance; yet now that Mary had so delicate and so important a mission to execute she burned to know more of the lonely creature on that hill side, and she accepted with enthusiasm, as I have said, the charge committed to her by the enamored Hoover. Sir Charles and his daughter remained at the camp about three weeks. In that time Mary became friendly with Miss Woppit, as intimate, in fact, as it was possible for anybody to become with her. Mary found herself drawn strangely and inexplicably toward the woman. The fascination which Miss Woppit exercised over her was altogether new to Mary; here was a woman of lowly birth and in lowly circumstances, illiterate, neglected, lonely, yet possessing a charm--an indefinable charm which was distinct and potent, yet not to be analyzed--yes, hardly recognizable by any process of cool mental dissection, but magically persuasive in the subtlety of its presence and influence. Mary had sought to locate, to diagnose that charm; did it lie in her sympathy with the woman's lonely lot, or was it the romance of the wooing, or was it the fascination of those restless, searching eyes that Mary so often looked up to find fixed upon her with an expression she could not forget and could not define? I incline to the belief that all these things combined to constitute the charm whereof I speak. Miss Woppit had not the beauty that would be likely to attract one other own sex; she had none of the sprightliness and wit of womankind, and she seemed to be wholly unacquainted with the little arts, accomplishments and vanities in which women invariably find amusement. She was simply a strange, lonely creature who had accepted valorously her duty to minister to the comfort of her brother; the circumstances of her wooing invested her name and her lot with a certain pleasing romance; she was a woman, she was loyal to her sense of duty, and she was, to a greater degree than most women, a martyr--herein, perhaps, lay the secret to the fascination Miss Woppit had for Mary Lackington. At any rate, Mary and Miss Woppit became, to all appearances, fast friends; the wooing of Miss Woppit progressed apace, and the mystery of those Red Hoss Mountain crimes became more and--but I have already declared myself upon _that_ point and I shall say no more thereof except so far as bears directly upon my story, which is, I repeat, of a wooing, and not of crime. Three-fingered Hoover had every confidence in the ultimate success of the scheme to which Miss Mary had become an enthusiastic party. In occasional pessimistic moods he found himself compelled to confess to himself that the reports made by Miss Mary were not altogether such as would inspire enthusiasm in the bosom of a man less optimistic than he--Hoover--was.