Here Milly White had been born and here she had lived to grow from babyhood to womanhood, a wild growth, like that of the native trees, plants and birds. Physically she was beautiful to look upon, if in looking one could separate the physical from the other form of human beauty; but she was strictly a product of Sand Mountain, the last refinement of its productive forces, no doubt, approaching as near the perfect as nature, working within such limitations and under such hopeless restrictions, could get. It would be impossible to give in words any fair idea of her beauty or of her ignorance; to attempt either would appear like exaggeration. The painter would succeed no better, for his representation could reach no further than pathetic caricature. Her life, her condition and her surroundings composed an instance not far out of the common in Sand Mountain existence. Her beauty, it is true, was exceptional, as beauty is in all cases, her ignorance was somewhat denser than the average, and her experience on Reynolds' account, had compassed its utmost possibility of disturbing force. In so far as her vision could go, she peered into the paradise coveted by all girls, and dreamed the dreams of unselfish love. Every evening she went down to the little gate and leaned upon it, watching long and patiently for the coming of a man, as other women do, and every morning she renewed the vigil for a time, and the evening and the morning were a day. She had but a vague understanding of things too vaguely understood by all girls, and she made of Reynolds no more a god than most young women do of the men they love. She could not realize her danger and she felt but indefinitely how much she was risking. As days and weeks dragged by and John did not come, she showed signs of nervous restlessness; but she said little. Her health, instead of failing, as might have been expected, seemed to improve. Her face filled out to full womanly proportions, her cheeks gathering rich tints of rose and carmine, her eyes softening and dilating as if with the wonder of some sweet, strange discovery. She hovered, as a butterfly about a flower, over the things in Reynolds' room. For hours she would sit before the sketch on the easel and gaze dreamily, half forlornly at it. She arranged and re-arranged the books, the chairs, the little worn foot-stool, the slippers, the dressing-gown, creeping about as noiselessly as if she feared the least sound might break her reverie. She was lonely, despondent and nervous at times, but she did not complain. White exhausted over and over again his stock of ingenuity in inventing excuses for "thet ther Colonel," who, he insisted, was "a hevin' of sech a roarin' ole time, a shootin' of birds an' a drinkin' of liquor an' a playin' of them ther new-fangled games of keerds." White himself had grown strangely uneasy in his manner and his eyes had lost somewhat of their humorous light. It was beginning