Back of the camp and tending northwest to southeast was a low ridge of outcropping slate, bare in spots--a hog-back, in wilderness phrase. Beyond this lay a mile-long "blow-down," where a tornado had levelled the tall timber. A fire, sweeping this when dry, left a criss-cross confusion of charred logs, blueberry bushes had followed fast, and now those luscious berries were ripening in limitless profusion. Every fair day Ray and Chip came here to pick, to eat, to hear the birds sing, to gather flowers and be happy. They watched the rippled lake with now and then a deer upon its shores, from this ridge; they climbed up or down it, hand in hand; they fished in the lake or canoed about it, time and again; and many a summer evening, when the moon served, Chip handled the paddle, while Ray picked his banjo and sang his darky songs all around this placid sheet of water. And what a wondrous charm this combination of moonlight on the lake and love songs softened and made tender by the still water held for Chip! As those melodies had done on that first evening beside the camp-fire, so now they filled her soul with a strange, new-born, and wonderful sense of joy and gladness. The black forest enclosing them now was sombre and silent. Spites still lurked in its depths and doubtless were watching; but a protector was near, his arm was strong; back at the landing were kind friends, and the undulating path of silvered light, the round, smiling orb above, the twinkling stars, and this matchless music became a new wonder-world to her. Her eyes glistened and grew tender with pathos. She had no more idea than a child why she was happy. Each day sped by on wings of wind, each hour, with her one best companion, the most joyful, and so, day by day, poor Chip learned the sad lesson of loving. But never a word or hint of this fell from her lips. Ray was so far above her and such a young hero, that she, a homeless outcast, tainted by the filth and service of Tim's Place, could only look to him as she did to the moon. They laughed and exchanged histories. Ofttimes he reproved her speech. They fished, picked berries, and worked together like two big children, and only her wistful eyes told the other why they were wistful. Martin, busy at camp-building and watching ever for an enemy's coming, saw it not. Angie was as obtuse; the old hermit, misanthropic and verging into dotage, was certainly oblivious, and so no ripples of interest disturbed these workers. Such conditions were as sunshine to flowers in aiding the two young lovers, so this forest idyl matured rapidly. Chip, perhaps more imaginative than Ray, since most of her education had been the weird superstition of Old Tomah, felt most of its emotional force, though unconscious of the reason.