It was several hours after Frank Weatherby had set out on the McIntyre trail--when the sun had risen to a point where it came mottling through the tree-tops and dried the vines and bushes along the fragrant, yielding path below--that a girl came following in the way which led up the mountain top. She wore a stout outing costume--short skirt and blouse, heavy boots, and an old felt school hat pinned firmly to luxuriant dark hair. On her arm she carried the basket of many wanderings, and her step was that of health and strength and purpose. One watching Constance Deane unawares--noting her carriage and sureness of foot, the easy grace with which she overcame the various obstructions in her path--might have said that she belonged by right to these woods, was a part of them, and one might have added that she was a perfect flowering of this splendid forest. On the evening before, she had inquired of Robin the precise entrance to the McIntyre trail, and with his general directions she had no hesitation now in setting out on her own account to make the climb which would bring her to the coveted specimens at the mountain top. She would secure them with the aid of no one and so give Frank an exhibition of her independence, and perhaps impress him a little with his own lack of ambition and energy. She had avoided the Lodge, making her way around the lake to the trail, and had left no definite word at home as to her destination, for it was quite certain that Mrs. Deane would worry if it became known that Constance had set off up the mountain alone. Yet she felt thoroughly equal to the undertaking. In her basket she carried some sandwiches, and she had no doubt of being able to return to the Lodge during the afternoon, where she had a certain half-formed idea of finding Frank disconsolately waiting--a rather comforting--even if pathetic--picture of humiliation. Constance did not linger at the trout-brook which had enticed Frank from the narrow upward path, save to dip up a cold drink with the little cup she carried, and to rest up a moment and watch the leaping water as it foamed and sang down the natural stairway which led from one mystery in the dark vistas above to another mystery and wider vistas below--somehow, at last, to reach that deeper and vaster and more impenetrable mystery--the sea. She recalled some old German lines beginning, "_Du Bachlein, silberhell und klar_," and then she remembered having once recited them to Frank, and how he had repeated them in an English translation: "Thou brooklet, silver-bright and clear-- Forever passing--always here-- Upon thy brink I sit, and think Whence comest thou? Whence goest thou?" He had not confessed it, but she suspected the translation to be his own, and it had exasperated her that one who could do a thing well and with such facility should set so little store by his gift, when another, with a heart hunger for achievement, should have been left so unfavored of the gods.