To the refined and cultivated scholar, whose lot had been cast so strangely with the rude people of the mountain wilderness, the companionship of such a spirit and mind was a necessity.

Unconsciously Sammy had supplied the one thing lacking, and by her demands upon his thought had kept the shepherd from mental stagnation and morbid brooding.

Day after day she had grown into his life--his intellectual and spiritual child, and though she had dropped the rude speech of the native, she persisted still in calling him by his backwoods title, "Dad." But the little word had come to hold a new meaning for them both.

He saw now, all at once, what he would lose when she went away.
One by one, the petals from the big daisy fell from the girl's hand, dull splashes of gold against her dress and on the grass.
"Where will you go ?" he asked at last.
Sammy shook her head without looking up; "Don't know; anywhere that Daddy can earn a livin'-- I mean living--for us." "And when do you start ?" "Pretty soon now; there ain't nothin'-- there is nothing to stay for now.

Father told me when he went away day before yesterday that we would go as soon as he returned.