It was soon decided, at his suggestion, that they leave the little girl there in the cabin with Danny until morning, when there would be more light to get her down the mountain. This difficulty settled, with relieved hearts they were about to set forth on their return journey down the trail, when Nathalie, whose eyes had been wandering about the rustic hut, cried, “But do you live here all alone up on this mountain?” The young man’s eyes lighted. “Why, yes, I live alone up here. It is not much of a summer-resort,” he said, with a rarely winning smile. “Still it answers my purpose, for I am guaranteed plenty of pure air. I am an English soldier,” he volunteered somewhat slowly, “and have recently come over here from England. I was wounded,—” he glanced down at his arm with its gloved hand, and which Janet had been eying rather sharply, for it hung down in a strangely stiff way,—“and I thought the mountains would benefit me. But I am very glad I found the child,” he broke off abruptly, as if he had been revealing something he did not care to talk about. “I hope she will be none the worse for her adventure,” he continued kindly, “even if she failed to find the fairies.” Nathalie had explained how the child had come to wander away. [Illustration: Nathalie bent over in anxious solicitude.—_Page 259._] Early the next morning Danny and Sheila appeared, the little girl now quite wide-awake, but she grew very shamefaced when Mrs. Page scolded her gently for giving them such a fright, dwelling upon the deep anxiety she had caused Miss Natty, when she had been so good to her, too. The tears came into the brown eyes at this rebuke, and, impulsively running to the girl, she protested with a stifled sob that she would not run after any more fairies. Of course Nathalie had to kiss the woeful little damsel, but perceiving that the auspicious moment had arrived to impress her with a fact that she should know, she took her out on the porch, and then gravely and carefully made clear to the little mind that there were no fairies, but just beautiful fancies that existed in the brains of people, who put them in stories so as to make them interesting to children. But Danny, apparently greatly distressed, now drew Nathalie to one side, and confided to her that he believed that the young man must be hungry and very poor, for there seemed to be no food in the cabin. And he had heard him mutter,—when he thought the boy was asleep,—as he counted some loose change he had taken from his pocket and thrown on the table, “Well, that won’t get much food.” And then he had sat very quiet for a long time, as if thinking.