Simultaneously came a startled exclamation in a treble voice, the clatter of a fallen kettle and then a quick cry of pain. In an instant Donald had scrambled ungracefully to his feet and found himself face to face with a picture that he was destined never to forget. Backed by a big stone fireplace, in which the embers were glowing ruddily, stood a young girl clad in a simple one-piece dress, which left neck, arms and legs bare. One dusty, but dainty, foot was held between her hands, while she balanced on the other. A tumbling mass of rich brown curls, shot with gleaming threads like tiny rays of captive sunshine, fell, unbound, over her shoulders, and partly veiled a childlike face, tanned to an Indian brown and now twisted with pain, but nevertheless so startlingly sweet and appealing that the man gasped in astonishment. [Illustration: "ONE DUSTY, BUT DAINTY, FOOT WAS HELD BETWEEN HER HANDS"] As it is with many who wear bluntness like a cloak, Donald possessed a deep-seated appreciation of the beautiful, without being capable of expressing it. But now he vaguely realized that here, where he would last have looked for it, he had blundered upon a child whom Mother Nature had designed lovingly and with painstaking care, perhaps in order to satisfy herself that, in the bustle of creation which nowadays left her little time for attention to fine detail, her hands had not wholly lost the cunning which was theirs when the world was young and women were few and fair. Her face had the qualities of a sweet wild-flower, delicate of form yet hardy enough to stand up under the stress of a storm. A critic might have declared the sensitive mouth a shade too broad for the tapering lines which formed the firmly rounded chin; he might have said that the upper lip, against which its companion was now tightly pressed to check its trembling, was too short for classic beauty; but he would hardly have been able to find a flaw in the molding of the straight, slender nose or the broad forehead, or the cheeks which curved as symmetrically as the petals of a damask rose, or--if he were human--with the faint shadows at the corners of the lips which were not dimples, but fascinatingly suggested them. But, above all, it was the child's eyes, heavy with a sudden rush of unshed tears that merely added to their appealing charm, which left the strongest impression on the man. They were remarkable eyes, long of lash and of a deep blue with limpid purple shadows and golden highlights. Her form, untrammelled by confining clothing and bending naturally, was slender and lithesome, but full of curves which told that the bud of childhood was just beginning to open into the blossom of early maturity--about fifteen or sixteen years old, Donald guessed her to be. At her feet lay an overturned kettle the contents from which, a simple stew, was sending up a cloud of steam from the rough floor, and explained the reason for the misty eyes and tenderly nursed ankle.