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One girl especially attracted Abner. She was a tall, rather bony girl with a milky face and hair the colour of corn silk. Her eyes were a lake-blue against her pale complexion. She, too, was standing watching the crowd, and her only movement was an occasional shifting of her weight from one foot to the other; and alternately throwing her right and left hip into a little undue prominence after the listless fashion of the hills.

Out of perhaps a score of women on the grass this girl alone drew Abner's eyes even for a return glance. The others appeared to be just people; strangers whom he had never seen before and with whom he had nothing in common; but something in this girl's face established in Abner some vague understanding of her or sympathy for her. The boy gazed at her fixedly, with an odd impression that he knew her, that somewhere he had seen her before. But with the exact placement of the hill folk for faces, he knew he never had, and this puzzled him and now he stared at her, trying to solve this faint mystery.

Presently, as if she felt his prolonged scrutiny, the girl looked around at him. The youth withdrew his eyes with a faint sense of embarrassment. But although he looked at the lively scene in front of him he did not see it any longer. He continued his speculations about the girl: who she was, what was her name, where she lived. He fancied she must be rich; something about her hat, which was not quite countryfied, suggested it. From this stepping stone he proceeded to the time-honoured hill-country deduction that she was "stuck up" and thought herself too good to speak to him. But when he glanced at her again something in the gentleness and wistfulness of her face denied this defamation. She was not "stuck up"; she was sweet and pensive, and, it seemed, a little sad. Well . . . Abner didn't know who she as; he never would know who she was. He wished he could know her; just as boys see and sigh for attractive faces every day and babies reach out for the moon; but that was impossible. And plan to meet her and speak to her was