The dog struggled for a time, but a kick brought him back to his place behind his master and they traveled on down the hill.

“Saved!” the girl breathed as she dropped weakly upon the ground.

“And yet,” she thought as strength and courage came back to her, “why should I fear everyone here behind Pine Mountain?”

Why indeed? The experiences of the past hours had made fear a part of her nature.

Once more upon the trail, she hurried on more rapidly than before. Dawn was on its way. The jagged peaks of the mountain ahead showed faintly gray against the dark sky.

“Have to hurry,” she told herself. “Have to—”

Her thoughts broke short off and once more she sprang from the trail. Other men were coming. The night seemed filled with them.

This time, finding herself in a narrow grass grown trail that led away at an angle from the hard beaten main trail, she hurriedly tiptoed along it.

“Not another narrow escape like the last one,” she thought.

She had followed this apparently deserted trail for a hundred yards when suddenly she came upon a cabin.

Her first thought was to turn and flee. A second look told her that the place was abandoned. Two panes of glass in the single window were broken and before the door, displaying their last fiery red blossoms, two hollyhocks did sentry duty.

The door stood ajar. For a moment she hesitated before the red sentries.

“Oh, pshaw!” she whispered at last. “You dear old-fashioned guardians of a once happy home, I can pass you without cracking a stem or bruising a blossom.”

Putting out her hands, she parted the tall flowers with gentlest care, then stepped between them. For this simple ceremony, inspired by her love of beauty, she was destined in not so many hours to feel supremely grateful.

Inside she found a lonesome scene. The moon, shining through the single window, struck across a rude table. A dark cavern at the end spoke of a fireplace which once had offered ruddy comfort.

A ladder leading to the loft stood against the wall. Without thinking much about it, she climbed that ladder. Somewhat to her surprise, she found the attic half filled with clean, dry, rustling corn husks.

“Someone stowed his corn here. Husked the corn and left the husks.”

“How—how comfortable,” she sighed as her weary body relaxed upon this springy bed.

“I’ll rest here for a moment,” she thought, “rest here for a—for a—rest—”

The next moment she was fast asleep.

Hours later she awoke with a start. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Then, catching the rustle of corn husks, she remembered where she was.

“Must have fallen asleep,” she said, a feeling of consternation coming over her. “And now it is—” She gazed about her questioningly.

“Now it is daylight,” she finished as she noted a bright bar of sunlight that fell across the floor. “Here I stay until dark.”

Here she remained. Once she left the cabin for a moment to slake her thirst at a spring that bubbled out of the rocks just back of the house. Both in coming and going she reverently parted the hollyhocks before the door.

“Probably some childish hands spilled the seed that started them growing there,” she told herself. “I wonder where that child may be now?”

The attic was silent, too silent. In one dark corner a fly, caught in a spider’s web, slowly buzzed his life away.

There was time now for thinking. And she did think, thought this whole adventure through from its very beginning.

It is strange, the unusual opportunities for adventure and romance that come to one in out-of-the-way places. Florence, with her chum, Marion, had been invited by Mrs. McAlpin, Florence’s aunt, to spend the summer in the mountains. They had come, expecting fishing, swimming and mountain climbing. They had found time for these, too; but above all, their summer had been filled with service, service for those whose opportunities had been far fewer than their own.

The one great service they had been able to render had been that of conducting a summer school for the barefooted, eager little children who swarmed the sides of Big Black Mountain. It had been a real pleasure to teach them. Strange to say, though there was a public school at the mouth of Laurel Branch, little was ever taught in it. The teacher, who knew nothing of grammar, geography or history, and little enough of “Readin’, ’Ritin’ and ’Rithmatic,” took the school for no purpose save that he might draw the public money. The school, which was supposed to last six months, he brought to an end as speedily as possible. If no children came he could go back to his farm work of putting away his corn crop or rolling logs to clear land for next year’s harvest, and he could do this and still draw his pay as a teacher.

The schoolhouse, a great log shack with holes for doors and windows, was without either doors or windows to keep out the weather. Before the cold autumn rains the little group of children who came to drone out words after their disinterested teacher vanished like blackbirds before the first snow, leaving the teacher free for other things.

Now all was to be changed—at least the girls hoped so. They had been teaching the summer school for six weeks when Ransom Turner, a sincere and ambitious man who had the good of the community at heart, had come to them proposing that they remain through autumn and early winter and teach the public school.

Here was an opportunity to make a real contribution, to set a model for all time, to give these simple mountain folks an idea of what school should be.

“Of course,” Ransom Turner had said, “we’ll have to elect you a trustee.”

“A trustee!” they had exclaimed in unison, failing to understand his meaning.

“Of course. You don’t think that worthless scamp that’s been drawin’ the pay and not teachin’ any could get the job unless he’d elected a trustee, do you? But leave that to us mounting folks. You jest say you’ll take the school an’ we’ll elect you a trustee.”

“But the schoolhouse!” Florence had remonstrated. “It’s bad enough now—flies, and all that—but in cold weather it would be impossible.”

Ransom’s face had clouded. “Can’t be helped none, I reckon. They hain’t no funds fer hit. Doors and windows cost a heap, havin’ to be brought in as they do. Us mounting folks are most terrible poor, most terrible.”

The two girls had considered the proposition seriously. They were not yet through the University. It seemed a little hard to give up the first half of their school year. They caught visions of great buildings, swarming students, laughing faces, books, libraries, all the good things that go to make University life a joyous affair. Yet here was an opportunity for an unusual service. Could they afford to refuse? They had talked it over. In the end Florence had said to Ransom:

“If you can manage the trustee and we can get some money to fix up the schoolhouse, we will stay.”

To this Marion had given hearty assent and Ransom Turner had gone away happy.

Money for the new school! It had been their desire for just this that had put Florence in her present strange and mysterious predicament.

It had been a very unusual proposition that Mr. John Dobson of the Deep Rock Mining Company had made to them, a proposition that held great possibilities.

They had gone to him to ask him to help them with money for the