"That's what ye allus says, baby-girl," answered Jim, "so I got to believe it. And if I didn't, there wouldn't be no use o' livin'--not a mite." There was a vibrating tenderness in the man's voice, and an indescribable pathos in its tone, as he spoke, that caused me instinctively to turn my head and look into his face. The light shone full upon it--so full and direct that there were no shadows anywhere. Whether it was because of the lamp's direct rays or because of his long ride in the crisp November air, I could not decide, but certain it was that Jim's face was without a wrinkle, and that he looked twenty years younger. Even the hard, drawn lines about his mouth and nose had disappeared. With the light of the lamp came another revelation. While the girl's cheap woollen dress and jacket, of a pattern sold in the country stores, showed her to be the product of Marvin's home and the recipient of his scanty bounty, her trim, well-rounded figure, soft, glossy hair--now that her hat was off--and small hands and feet, classed her as one of far gentler birth. There was, too, as she passed in and out of the room helping her mother with the supper-table, a certain grace and dignity, especially in the way in which she bent her head on one side to listen, a gesture often seen in a drawing-room, but never, in my experience, in a cabin. What astonished me most, however, were her hands--her exquisitely modelled hands, still ruddy from the fresh night air, but so wonderfully curved and dimpled. And then, too, the perfect graciousness and simplicity of her manner and its absolute freedom from coquetry or self-consciousness. Her mother was right--I would not soon forget her. And yet, by what freak of Nature, I found myself continually repeating, had this flower been made to bloom on this soil? Through what ancestor's veins had this blood trickled, and through what channels had it reached these humble occupants of a forest home? But if her mother was the happier for her coming, Jim, radiant with joy, seemed to walk on air. His head was up, his arms were swinging free, and there was a lightness and spring in his movements that made me forget the grotesqueness of his gait. Nor, as the days went by, did this buoyant happiness ever fail him. He and Ruby were inseparable from the time she opened the rude door of her bedroom in the morning until she bade us all good-night and carried with her all the light and charm and joyousness of the day. The camping-out, I may as well state, had been given up as soon as I had mentioned it, she saying to me with a little start, as if frightened at the proposition, that she thought she'd better stay home and help her mother. Then, seeing Jim's face fall, she added, "But we can be off all day, can't we?"