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.I'll take you back to the cabin now, though I bet you could find your way there as well as I can."On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking a few tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail brought them to him."That's the kind you're looking for, isn't it?" she said, half timidly."It is," responded Low, in gratified surprise; "but how did you know it? You're not a botanist, are you?""I reckon not," said Teresa; "but you picked some when we came, and I noticed what they were."Here was indeed another revelation.Low stopped and gazed at her with such frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black eyes fell before him."And do you think," he asked with logical deliberation, "that you could find any plant from another I should give you?""Yes.""Or from a drawing of it?""Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me."A half-confidential, half fraternal silence followed."I tell you what.I've got a book"—"I know it," interrupted Teresa; "full of these things.""Yes.Do you think you could"—"Of course I could," broke in Teresa, again."But you don't know what I mean," said the imperturbable Low."Certainly I do.Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different ones for you to write under—that's it, isn't it?"Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she had fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor."I suppose," said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which it would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they were treading—"I suppose that she places great value on them?"Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at all impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also.He said "Yes;" but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of San Francisco, that "they were rather particular about the rarer kinds."Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations with some favored one of her sex, this frank confession of a plural devotion staggered her."They?" she repeated."Yes," he continued calmly."The Botanical Society I correspond with are more particular than the Government Survey.""Then you are doing this for a society?" demanded Teresa, with a stare."Certainly.I'm making a collection and classification of specimens.I intend—but what are you looking at?"Teresa had suddenly turned away.Putting his hand lightly on her shoulder, the young man brought her face to face with him again.She was laughing."I thought all the while it was for a girl," she said; "and"—But here the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible and genuine outburst of laughter.It was the first time he had seen her even smile other than bitterly.Characteristically unconscious of any humor in her error, he remained unembarrassed.But he could not help noticing a change in the expression of her face, her voice, and even her intonation.It seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the last ties that bound her to a self-imposed character, had swept away the last barrier between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude.The change in her utterance and the resumption of her softer Spanish accent seemed to have come with her confidences, and Low took leave of her before their sylvan cabin with a comrade's heartiness, and a complete forgetfulness that her voice had ever irritated him.When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty.But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight, the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous order and cleanliness unknown before.Fresh bark hid the inequalities of the floor.The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rude shelves were carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright but quickly fading flowers were disposed around the blackened chimney.She had evidently availed herself of the change of clothing he had brought her, for her late garments were hanging from the hastily-devised wooden pegs driven in the wall.The young man gazed around him with mixed feelings of gratification and uneasiness.His presence had been dispossessed in a single hour; his ten years of lonely habitation had left no trace that this woman had not effaced with a deft move of her hand.More than that, it looked as if she had always occupied it; and it was with a singular conviction that even when she should occupy it no longer it would only revert to him as her dwelling that he dropped the bark shutters athwart the opening, and left it to follow her.To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was easy enough.She had gone in the direction of this morning's camp.Once or twice he paused with a half-gesture of recognition and a characteristic "Good!" at the place where she had stopped, but was surprised to find that her main course had been as direct as his own.Deviating from this direct line with Indian precaution he first made a circuit of the camp, and approached the shattered trunk from the opposite direction.He consequently came upon Teresa unawares.But the momentary astonishment and embarrassment were his alone.He scarcely recognized her.She was wearing the garments he had brought her the day before—a certain discarded gown of Miss Nellie Wynn, which he had hurriedly begged from her under the pretext of clothing the wife of a distressed over-land emigrant then on the way to the mines.Although he had satisfied his conscience with the intention of confessing the pious fraud to her when Teresa was gone and safe from pursuit, it was not without a sense of remorse that he witnessed the sacrilegious transformation
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