was forced to pick his way carefully in a detour around its base. Between times he found hobnails much inclined to click against unforeseen stones. The broken twig came to possess other than literary importance. After a little his nerves asserted themselves. Unconsciously he relaxed his attention and began to think.
The subject of his thoughts was the girl he had seen just twenty-four hours before. He caught himself remembering little things he had not consciously noticed at the time, as, for instance, the strange contrast between the mischief in her eyes and the austerity of her brow, or the queer little fashion she had of winking rapidly four or five times, and then opening her eyes wide and looking straight into the depths of his own. He considered it quite a coincidence that he had unconsciously returned to the spot on which they had met the day before—the rich Crazy Horse lode.
As though in answer to his recognition of this fact, her voice suddenly called to him from above.
"Hullo, little boy!" it cried.
He felt at once that he was pleased at the encounter.
"Hullo!" he answered; "where are you?"
"Right here."
He looked up, and then still up, until, at the flat top of the castellated dike that stood over him, he caught a gleam of pink. The contrast between it, the blue of the sky, and the dark green of the trees, was most beautiful and unusual. Nature rarely uses pink, except in sunsets and in flowers. Bennington thought pleasedly how every impression this girl made upon him was one of grace or beauty or bright colour. The gleam of pink disappeared, and a great pine cone, heavy with pitch, came buzzing through the air to fall at his feet.
"That's to show you where I am," came the clear voice. "You ought to feel honoured. I've only three cones left."
The dike before which Bennington had paused was one of the round variety. It rose perhaps twenty feet above the débris at its base, sheer, gray, its surface almost intact except for an insignificant number of frost fissures. From its base the hill fell rapidly, so that, even from his own inferior elevation, he was enabled to look over the tops of trees standing but a few rods away from him. He could see that the summit of this dike was probably nearly flat, and he surmised that, once up there, one would become master of a pretty enough little plateau on which to sit; but his careful circumvallation could discover no possible method of ascent. The walls afforded no chance for a squirrel's foothold even. He began to doubt whether he had guessed aright as to the girl's whereabouts, and began carefully to examine the tops of the trees. Discovering nothing in them, he cast another puzzled glance at the top of the dike. A pair of violet eyes was scrutinizing him gravely over the edge of it.
"How in the world did you get up there?" he cried.
"Flew," she explained, with great succinctness.
"Look out you don't fall," he warned hastily; her attitude was alarming.
"I am lying flat," said she, "and I can't fall."
"You haven't told me how you got up. I want to come up, too."
"How do you know I want you?"
"I have such a lot of things to say!" cried Bennington, rather at a loss for a valid reason, but feeling the necessity keenly.
"Well, sit down and say them. There's a big flat rock just behind you."
This did not suit him in the least. "I wish you'd let me up," he begged petulantly. "I can't say what I want from here."
"I can hear you quite well. You'll have to talk from there, or else keep still."
"That isn't fair!" persisted the young man, adopting a tone of argument. "You're a girl----"
"Stop there! You are wrong to start with. Did you think that a creature who could fly to the tops of the rocks was a mere girl? Not at all."
"What do you mean?" asked the easily bewildered Bennington.
"What I say. I'm not a girl."
"What are you then?"
"A sun fairy."
"A sun fairy?"
"Yes; a real live one. See that cloud over toward the sun? The nice downy one, I mean. That's my couch. I sleep on it all night. I've got it near the sun so that it will warm up, you see."
"I see," cried Bennington. He could recognise foolery—provided it were ticketed plainly enough. He sat down on the flat rock before indicated, and clasped his knee with his hands, prepared to enjoy more. "Is that your throne up there, Sun Fairy?" he asked. She had withdrawn her head from sight.
"It is," her voice came down to him in grave tones.
"It must be a very nice one."
"The nicest throne you ever saw."
"I never saw one, but I've often heard that thrones were unpleasant things."
"I am sitting, foolish mortal," said she, in tones of deep commiseration, "on a soft, thick cushion of moss—much more comfortable, I imagine, than hard, flat rocks. And the nice warm sun is shining on me—it must be rather chilly in the woods to-day. And there is a breeze blowing from the Big Horn—old rocks are always damp and stuffy in the shade. And I am looking away out over the Hills—I hope some people enjoy the sight of piles of quartzite."
"Cruel sun fairy!" cried Bennington. "Why do you tantalize me so with the delights from which you debar me? What have I done?"
There was a short silence.
"Can't you think of anything you've done?" asked the voice, insinuatingly.
Bennington's conscience-stricken memory stirred. It did not seem so ridiculous, under the direct charm of the fresh young voice that came down through the summer air from above, like a dove's note from a treetop, to apologize to Lawton's girl. The incongruity now was in forcing into this Arcadian incident anything savouring of conventionality at all. It had been so idyllic, this talk of the sun fairy and the cloud; so like a passage from an old book of legends, this dainty episode in the great, strong, Western breezes, under the great, strong, Western sky. Everything should be perfect, not to be blamed.
"Do sun fairies accept apologies?" he asked presently, in a subdued voice.
"They might."
"This particular sun fairy is offered one by a man who is sorry."
"Is it a good big one?"
"Indeed, yes."
The head appeared over the edge of the rock, inspected him gravely for a moment, and was withdrawn.
"Then it is accepted," said the voice.
"Thank you!" he replied sincerely. "And now are you going to let down your rope ladder, or whatever it is? I really want to talk to you."
"You are so persistent!" cried the petulant voice, "and so foolish! It is like a man to spoil things by questionings!"
He suddenly felt the truth of this. One can not talk every day to a sun fairy, and the experience can never be repeated. He settled back on the rock.
"Pardon me, Sun Fairy!" he cried again. "Rope ladders, indeed, to one who has but to close her eyes and she finds herself on a downy cloud near the sun. My mortality blinded me!"
"Now you are a nice boy," she approved more contentedly, "and as a reward you may ask me one question."
"All right," he agreed; and then, with instinctive tact, "What do you see up there?"
He could hear her clap her hands with delight, and he felt glad that he had followed his impulse to ask just this question instead of one more personal and more in line with his curiosity.
"Listen!" she began. "I see pines, many pines, just the tops of them, and they are all waving in the breeze. Did you ever see trees from on top? They are quite different. And out from the pines come great round hills made all of stone. I think they look like skulls. Then there are