"Why, doesn't the climate of California agree with everybody?" asked Mary Lee guilelessly.
The man laughed and shook his head. "Depends on what your complaint is. Now my complaint always happened to be somebody else's complaint and that's what made it bad for my health at times."
Mary Lee pondered some time upon this unintelligible speech, indeed until the waterfall was reached where the glad presence of the water ousel put all else out of her thoughts. There he was to be sure, flitting, diving, whirling in the eddying pools, poising like a humming-bird above the cascade, and singing, ever singing. Oh, the joy of it! Mary Lee stood enraptured. Once she turned a beamingly appreciative face upon the rough man at her side.
"Like him, do ye?" he said.
"I love him; I adore him," returned Mary Lee bending a little forward to see the better. Only a small bluish-gray bird with a touch of brown upon him, but he was the very spirit of the waterfall, a sprite—a water-baby. "Do you suppose he will still be here when the others get back?" asked Mary Lee. "I'd so love them to see him."
"He may be," returned the man, then in an undertone, "but I won't."
"I certainly am obliged to you for showing me the two things I wanted most to see," said Mary Lee as they wended their way back to the wood-chopper's tree. "I should think your children would be very glad to have a father who could show them so many woodsy creatures. Have you any little girls?"
The man was silent for a moment. "I don't know whether I have or not," he said presently.
"Oh!" Mary Lee looked surprised. "Why not?"
"Well, you see the way of it was this. It's twenty-odd year since I married my wife. She was a Mexican girl, pretty as a picture. Her folks didn't cotton to me and circumstances was against me so I lit out not long after we was married, and next thing I hear my girl is dead, and the message I got from her father didn't make it look wise for me to go back and claim the baby. Besides, what would I do with a youngster, living wild like I had to? She was better off, I figgered it out, than she would be with her father, so I left her be, and though I ain't forgot her, I don't ever mean she shall know she has a daddy. I ain't nothin' to be proud of, missy, though once I was a right likely sort of buck. Well, so long. I guess we must part here. I hear your folks hollerin' to you. There's your road right straight ahead." And before Mary Lee could say a word he plunged into the woods and was lost to sight.