The Forest Ranger's Story Perhaps the motive that, in Fairlands, had restrained the artist from seeking to know his neighbor was without force in the mountains.

Perhaps it was that, in the unconventional freedom of the hills, the man obeyed more readily his impulse.

Aaron King did not stop to question.

As though in answer to the call of that spirit which spoke in the tones of the violin, he moved in the direction from which the music came.
Climbing out of the bed of the stream to the bench that slopes hack--a quarter of a mile, perhaps--to the foot of the canyon wall, he found himself in an old road that, where it once crossed the creek, had been destroyed by the mountain floods.

Wonderingly he followed the dimly marked track that led through the chaparral toward a thicket of cedars, from beyond which the music seemed to come.