One was a sturdy boy of eight or nine neglected years. On his rather
heavy, freckled face and in his sharp blue eyes there was, already, a
look of hardness that is not good to see in the countenance of a child.
The other, his sister, was two years younger--a thin wisp of a girl,
with tiny stooping shoulders, as though, even in her babyhood, she had
found a burden too heavy. With her tired little face and grave,
questioning eyes she looked at the world as if she were wondering,
wistfully, why it should bother to be so unkind to such a helpless mite
of humanity.
As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with
experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest
and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet,
as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud
of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity.
Suddenly they stood still.
For a long, silent moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway
that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up
the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common
impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in
the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look of understanding.
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