They were all seated at last, but yet another surprise was in store for the visitor, for Rose folded her hands, bent her head until the curls veiled the glowing face, and began a simple blessing. Big Jerry sat bolt upright with his eyes screwed up ludicrously, and, although Judd bent his head the merest fraction, it was with obvious embarrassment, and his flashing optics kept sending suspicious glances at the "furriner" as though to discover if he were laughing at them all. In fact, nothing was further from Donald's mind. It had been long since he had partaken of a meal at which grace was said, but the simple, homely words touched a chord of memory and made it vibrate to a note which brought both pain and pleasure. The host's stentorian "Amen" was the signal for attack, and for a time the business of satisfying the demands of healthy hunger was paramount to all things else. It was no feast of wit and wisdom, but of something, for the time being, more desirable, and the application of the other three gave Donald an opportunity to study covertly the unusual group of which he had so unexpectedly become a part. Although he was essentially a man of action, his brusqueness of manner was, in part at least, a pose which had become unconscious, and, deep within his heart, in a chamber carefully locked from the gaze of his fellow men, dwelt Romance and Imagination--the spirit gifts of a mother, whose death, five years before, had brought him his first black grief. Had this visioning power been lacking in him he could never have accomplished the modern miracles which he had already wrought many times in constructive and restorative surgery. Now, the spirit of imagery in his soul was stirred by something in the romantic unreality of his surroundings--the rude, yet interesting room which served all family purposes save that of slumber; the mellow radiance from a crude lamp and the ever-changing light of the open fire; the long, wavering shadows within the cabin; and, without, the banshee wailing of the storm wind around the eaves, the occasional crash of thunder, the creaking of limbs and fitful dashes of rain. He found himself leaning back in his chair and mentally attempting to dissect and study not the bodies, but the personalities, of the three who were the representatives of a type, in manners and customs at least, new to him.