As he paused the boy looked up sympathetically. “Gee, I don’t wonder you hid,” he commented. “You wouldn’t catch me getting married. I’d heaps rather go to sea, maybe to China, or do something exciting.”
“H-m! A very sensible decision, my lad, and yet the sea of matrimony, I’ve been told, is not without its exciting adventures.” Then the civil engineer laughed. “Romance is a little beyond your comprehension, and I’m glad it is. It will be a relief to hear about something else for a time. I’m not in love, never was in love, and don’t believe I ever shall be in love.”
Why was it, at that very moment, and quite without will of his own, Frederick Edrington saw in his memory a slim young girl standing silhouetted against a gleaming morning sky, with arms outflung and curling brown hair blown about a face so lovely that it had haunted him every hour, waking or sleeping, that had passed since he had first beheld the vision?
“I say, Ken,” he suddenly remarked, “that new teacher of yours, has she soft curly, brown hair, and does she wear a khaki hiking-suit—short skirt and bloomers?”
The boy nodded, then exclaimed as he suddenly recalled something: “Gee whiz! Mr. Edrington, I clean forgot it was teacher who started me out on this hunt for you. ’Course she didn’t know it was you, but the other morning, when she climbed to the top of the Little Peak trail to see the sun rise, she saw a camp-fire, and she asked me if I could guess who might have made it. I sort of hoped it was a sheep-rustler, and Miss Bayley—gee, but she’s a sport, all right—let me out of school early that day so I could go up and see who was there, and then it was I saw smoke over here, and thought I’d climb up and see who it might be. I found a piece of a letter in the ashes that day, and one word was ‘engineering.’ It made me hope,—how I did hope,—maybe it was you,” then, triumphantly, “and it was.”
“Rather is, son,” was the reply. Then the young man rose as he remarked. “Wish you could stay till the snow falls.”
The boy’s eyes opened wide. “Mr. Edrington,” he exclaimed, “you aren’t going to stay up here all winter, are you? Why, you’ll be frozen stiff.”
The young man laughed as he knelt to skin the small deer. But he spoke with decision. “I shall stay in this impenetrable fastness until I hear that the lovely Marlita Arden has married a certain Lord Dunsbury, who really wants her, or wants her millions, I don’t know which, nor do I care. Marlita thinks that she loves me, but nevertheless she will soon decide that it is better to have a titled spouse than a humble engineer, and until she does reach that decision the name of Frederick Edrington will be found among those reported missing; missing, anyway, from fashionable Washington society, where he has had to be more or less active for the past two years.”
“Well,” Ken said rather wistfully, “if you’re going to stay, I kind o’ wish I could stay, too, but I don’t know how Dixie could get on without me to bring the wood and make the fires, and—” The boy’s face suddenly brightened, and, leaping up, he did his wild Indian dance. Then, landing in front of the astonished onlooker, he concluded with a whoop: “I say, Mr. Edrington, if you want to hide, I know where’s the best place, and you could be right with me, with us, I mean.”
“Where?” the young man was curious.