shadow her spirit, "only no one ever calls me Jerauld—I'm always just Jerry."

"Well, Miss Jerry, you can't ever know how glad I am that I met you! If I hadn't, well, I guess I'd have perished on the face of Kettle Mountain. I am plain John Westley, stopping over at Wayside, and I can swear I never before did anything so silly as to faint, only I've just had a rather tough siege of typhoid."

"Oh, you shouldn't have tried to climb so far," she cried. "As soon as you're rested you must go home with me. And you'll have to stay all night 'cause Mr. Chubb's not back yet from Deertown and he won't drive after dark."

If John Westley had not been so utterly fascinated by his surroundings and his companion, he might have tried immediately to pull himself together enough to go on to Sunnyside; he was quite content, however, to lean against a huge rock and "rest."

"I'm trying to guess how old you are. And I thought you were a boy, too. I'm glad you're not."

"I'm 'most fourteen." Miss Jerry squared her shoulders proudly. "I guess I do look like a boy. I wear this sort of clothes most of the time, 'cept when I dress up or go to school. You see I've always gone with Little-Dad on Silverheels when he went to see sick people until I grew too heavy and—and Silverheels got too old." She said it with deep regret. "But I live—like this!"

"And do you wander alone all over the mountain?"

"Oh, no—just on this side of Kettle. Once a guide and a man from the Wayside disappeared there beyond Sleepy Hollow and that's why they call it Devil's Hole. Little-Dad made me promise never to go beyond the turn from Sunrise trail. I'd like to, too. But there are lots of jolly tramps this side. This"—waving her hand—"is the Witches' Glade and that"—nodding at the rock against which the man leaned—"is the Wishing-rock."

John Westley, who back home manufactured cement-mixers, suddenly felt that he had wakened into a world of make-believe.

He turned and looked at the rock—it was very much like a great many other rocks all over the mountainside and yet—there was something different!

Jerry giggled and clasped her very brown hands around her leather-clad knees.

"I name everything on this side—no one from Wayside ever comes this way, you see. I've played here since I was ever so little. I've always pretended that fairies lived in the mountains." She leveled serious eyes upon him. "They must! You know it's magic the way things—are—here!"

John Westley nodded. "I understand—you climb and you think you're on top and then there's lots higher up and you slide down and you think you're in the valley and you come out on a spot—like this—with all the world below you still."

"Mustn't it have been fun to make it all?" Jerry's eyes gleamed. "And such beautiful things grow everywhere and the colors are so different! And the woodsy glens and ravines—they're so mysterious. I've heard the trees talk! And the brooks—why, they can't be just nothing but brooks, they're so—so—alive!"

"Oh, yes," John Westley was plainly convinced. "Fairies must live in the mountains!"

"Of course I know now—I'm fourteen—that there are no such things as fairies but it's fun to pretend. But I still call this my Wishing-rock and I come here and stand on it and wish—only there aren't so awfully many things to wish for that you don't just ask Little-Dad for—big things, you know."

"Miss Jerry, you were wishing when I—arrived!"

She colored. "I was. Little-Dad says I ought to be a very happy girl and I am, but I guess everybody always has something real big that they think they want more than anything else."

John Westley inclined his head gravely. "I guess everybody does, Jerry. I think that's what keeps us going on in the race. Does it spoil your wish—to tell about it?"

"Oh, my, yes!" Then she laughed. "Only I suppose it couldn't because there aren't really fairies."

"What were you wishing?" He asked it coaxingly, in his eyes a deep interest.

She hesitated, her dark eyes dreaming. "That I could just go on along that shining white road—down there—around and around to—the other side of the mountain!" She rose up on her knees and stretched a bare arm down toward the valley. "I've always wished it since the days when Little-Dad used to ride that way and leave me home because it was too far. I know that everything that's the other side of the mountain is—oh, lots different from Miller's Notch and—school—and—Sunnyside—and Kettle." Her voice was plaintively wistful, her eyes shining. "I know it's different. From up here I can watch the automobiles come along and they always turn off and go around the mountain and never come to Miller's Notch unless they get lost. And the trains all go that way and—and it must be different! It's like the books I read. It's the world——" She sank back on her knees. "Once I tried to walk and once I rode Silverheels, but I never seemed to get to the real turn, it was so far and I was afraid. At sunset I look at the colors and the little clouds in the sky and they look like castles and I think it's the reflection of what's on the other side. That's what I was wishing." She turned serious eyes toward Westley. "Is it dreadfully wicked? Little-Dad said I was discontented and Sweetheart—that's mother—cried and hugged me as though she was frightened. But some day I've just got to go along that road."

SHE POINTED DOWN TO THE WINDING ROAD

For some reason that was beyond even the analytical power of his trained mind, John Westley was deeply stirred. Little Jerry, child of the woods—he felt as her mother must have felt! There was a mystery about the girl that held his curiosity; she could be no child of simple mountain people. He rose from his position against the rock with surprising agility.

"If you'll give me a hand I'll stand on your rock and wish that your wish may come true, if you want it so very much! But, maybe, child, you'll find that what you have right here is far better than anything on the other side of the mountain. Now, suppose you lead the way to Sunnyside."

Jerry sprang ahead eagerly. "And then you'll meet Sweetheart and Little-Dad and Bigboy and Pepperpot!"

CHAPTER II

SUNNYSIDE

Jerry had led her new friend only a little way down the sharply-descending trail when suddenly the trees, which had crowded thickly on either side, opened on a clearing where roses and hollyhocks, phlox, sweet-william, petunias and great purple-hearted asters bloomed in riotous confusion along with gold-tasseled corn, squash, beets and beans. A vine-covered gateway led from this into the grassy stretch that surrounded the low-gabled house.

"Hey-o! Sweetheart!" called Jerry in a clear voice.

In answer came a chorus of joyful yelping. Around the corner dashed a Llewellyn setter and a wiry-haired terrier, tumbling over one another in their eagerness to reach their mistress; at the same moment a door leading from the house to the garden opened and a slender woman came out.

John Westley knew at a glance that she was Jerry's mother, for she had the same expression of sunniness on her lips; her hair, like Jerry's, looked as though it had been burnished by the sun though, unlike Jerry's clipped locks, it was softly coiled on the top of her finely-shaped head.

"This is my mother," announced Jerry in a tone that really said: "This is the wisest, kindest, most beautiful lady in the whole wide world!"

Though the dress that Mrs. Travis wore was faded and worn and of no particular style, John