"I saw it a-coming, and set on--on devouring o' me, and still I couldn't stir. Everything was growing black and black except a big square with that monster eye a-glaring into the soul o' me!" The girl's face was set--her eyes vacant and wild; suddenly they softened, and her little white teeth showed through the childish, parted lips. "Then the eye went away, there was a blackness in the square place, and then a face came--a kind face it was--all a-laughing and it--it kept going farther and farther off to one side and I kept a-following and a-following and then--the big noise went rushing by me, and there I was right safe and plump up against a tree!" "Good Lord!" Again Truedale wiped his brow. "Since then," Nella-Rose relaxed, "I can shut my eyes and always there is the black square and sometimes--not always, but sometimes--things come!" "The face, Nella-Rose?" "No, I can't make that come. But things I want to, do and have. I always think, when I see things, that I'm going to do a big, fine thing some day. I feel upperty and then--poof! off go the pictures and I am just--lil' Nella-Rose again!" A comically heavy sigh brought Truedale back to earth. "But the face you saw long ago," Truedale whispered, "was it my face, do you think?" Nella-Rose paused--then quietly: "I--reckon it was. Yes, I'm mighty sure it was your face. When I saw it at that window"--she pointed across the room--"I certainly thought my eyes were closed and that--it had come--the kind, good face that saved me!" A sweet, friendly smile wreathed the girl's lips and she rose with rare dignity and held out her thin, delicate hand: "Mister Outlander, we're going to be neighbours, aren't we?" "Yes--neighbours!" Truedale took the hand with a distinct sense of suffocation, "but why do you call me an outlander?" "Because--you are! You're not _of_ our mountains." "No, I wish I were!" "Wishing can't make you. You are--or you aren't." Truedale noted the girl's language. Distorted and crude as it often was, it was never positively illiterate. This surprised him. "You--oh! you're not going yet!" He put his hand out, for the definite way in which Nella-Rose turned was ominous. Already she seemed to belong to the cabin room--to Truedale himself. Not a suggestion of strangeness clung to her. It was as if she had always been there but that his eyes had been holden. "I must go!" "Wait--oh! Nella-Rose. Let me walk part of the way with you. I--I have a thousand things to say." But she was gone out of the door, down the path.