He was a stranger--a young fellow with a brown mustache, wearing heavy Mexican spurs in his riding-boots, whose tinkling he apparently did not care to conceal.

He had perceived her, and was evidently pursuing her, but so awkwardly and timidly that she eluded him with ease.

When she had reached the security of the hollow tree and pulled the curtain of bark before the narrow opening, with her eye to the interstices, she waited his coming.

He arrived breathlessly in the open space before the tree where the bear once lay; the dazed, bewildered, and half-awed expression of his face, as he glanced around him and through the openings of the forest aisles, brought a faint smile to her saddened face.

At last he called in a half-embarrassed voice:-- "Miss Nellie!" The smile faded from Teresa's cheek.