"What y' doing?" snarled Munn, shrinking and squirming, terrified by the violent grasp, the pain of which almost sickened him.

Lansing looked at him, then shoved him out of his path, and carefully rinsed his hands in the stream. Then he laughed and turned around, but Munn was making rapid time towards the house, where the gray-clad women sat singing under the neglected apple-trees. The young man's eyes fell on the girl under the elm; she was apparently watching his every movement from those dark-blue eyes under the straw hat.

He took off his cap and went to her, and told her politely how amiable had been his intentions, and how stringent the game laws were, and begged her to believe that he intended no discourtesy to her community when he warned them against the wholesale destruction of the trout.

He had a pleasant, low voice, very attractive to women; she smiled and listened, offering no comment.

"And I want to assure you," he ended, "that we at the club will always respect your boundaries as we know you will respect ours. I fear one of our keepers was needlessly rude last night—from his own account. He's an old man; he supposes that all people know the game laws."

Lansing paused; she bent her head a trifle. After a silence he started on, saying, "Good-morning," very pleasantly.

"I wish you would sit down and talk to me," said the girl, without raising her head.

Lansing was too astonished to reply; she turned her head partly towards him as though listening. Something in the girl's attitude arrested his attention; he involuntarily dropped on one knee to see her face. It was in shadow.

"I want to tell you who I am," she said, without looking at him. "I am Eily O'Hara."

Lansing received the communication with perfect gravity. "Your father owned this land?" he asked.

"Yes; I own it now, ... I think."

He was silent, curious, amused.

"I think I do," she repeated; "I have never seen my father's will."

"Doubtless your lawyer has it," he suggested.

"No; I have it. It is in a steel box; I have the key hanging around my neck inside my clothes. I have never opened the box."

"But why do you not open the box?" asked Lansing, smiling.

She hesitated; color crept into her cheeks. "I have waited," she said; "I was alone; my father said—that—that—" She stammered; the rich flush deepened to her neck.

Lansing, completely nonplussed, sat watching the wonderful beauty of that young face.

"My father told me to open it only when I found an honest man in the world," she said, slowly.

The undertone of pathos in her voice drove the smile from Lansing's lips.

"Have you found the world so dishonest?" he asked, seriously.

"I don't know; I came from Notre Dame de Sainte Croix last year. Mr. Munn was my guardian; ... said he was; ... I suppose he is."

Lansing looked at her in sympathy.

"I am not one of the community," she said. "I only stay because I have no other home but this. I have no money, ... at least I know of none that is mine." Lansing was silent and attentive.

"I—I heard your voice; ... I wanted to speak to you—to hear you speak to me," she said. A new timidity came into her tone; she raised her head. "I—somehow when you spoke—I felt that you—you were honest." She stammered again, but Lansing's cool voice brought her out of her difficulty and painful shyness.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"I'm Dr. Lansing," he said.

"Will you open my steel box and read my papers for me?" she inquired, innocently.

"I will—if you wish," he said, impulsively; "if you think it wise. But I think you had better read the papers for yourself."

"Why, I can't read," she said, apparently surprised that he should not know it.

"You mean that you were not taught to read in your convent school?" he asked, incredulously.

A curious little sound escaped her lips; she raised both slender hands and unpinned her hat. Then she turned her head to his.

The deep-blue beauty of her eyes thrilled him; then he started and leaned forward, closer, closer to her exquisite face.

"My child," he cried, softly, "my poor child!" And she smiled and fingered the straw hat in her lap.

"Will you read my father's papers for me?" she said.

"Yes—yes—if you wish. Yes, indeed!" After a moment he said: "How long have you been blind?"

IV

That evening, at dusk, Lansing came into the club, and went directly to his room. He carried a small, shabby satchel; and when he had locked his door he opened the satchel and drew from it a flat steel box.

For half an hour he sat by his open window in the quiet starlight, considering the box, turning it over and over in his hands. At length he opened his trunk, placed the box inside, locked the trunk, and noiselessly left the room.

He encountered Coursay in the hall, and started to pass him with an abstracted nod, then changed his mind and slipped his arm through the arm of his young kinsman.

"Thought you meant to cut me," said Coursay, half laughing, half in earnest.

"Why?" Lansing stopped short; then, "Oh, because you played the fool with Agatha in the canoe? You two will find yourselves in a crankier craft than that if you don't look sharp."

"You have an ugly way of putting it," began Coursay. But Lansing scowled and said:

"Jack, I want advice; I'm troubled, old chap. Come into my room while I dress for dinner. Don't shy and stand on your hind-legs; it's not about Agatha Sprowl; it's about me, and I'm in trouble."

The appeal flattered and touched Coursay, who had never expected that he, a weak and spineless back-slider, could possibly be of aid or comfort to his self-sufficient and celebrated cousin, Dr. Lansing.

They entered Lansing's rooms; Coursay helped himself to some cognac, and smoked, waiting for Lansing to emerge from his dressing-room.

Presently, bathed, shaved, and in his shirt-sleeves, Lansing came in, tying his tie, a cigarette unlighted between his teeth.

"Jack," he said, "give me advice, not as a self-centred, cautious, and orderly citizen of Manhattan, but as a young man whose heart leads his head every time! I want that sort of advice; and I can't give it to myself."

"Do you mean it?" demanded Coursay, incredulously.

"By Heaven, I do!" returned Lansing, biting his words short, as the snap of a whip.

He turned his back to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred between him and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely and exactly as they occurred.

"I have the box in my trunk yonder," he went on; "the poor little thing managed to slip out while Munn was in the barn; I was waiting for her in the road."

After a moment Coursay asked if the girl was stone blind.

"No," said Lansing; "she can distinguish light from darkness; she can even make out form—in the dark; but a strong light completely blinds her."

"Can you help her?" asked Coursay, with quick pity.

Lansing did not answer the question, but went on: "It's been coming on—this blindness—since her fifth year; she could always see to read better in dark corners than in a full light. For the last two years she has not been able to see; and she's only twenty, Jack—only twenty."

"Can't you help her?" repeated Coursay, a painful catch in his throat.

"I haven't examined her," said Lansing, curtly.

"But—but you are an expert in that sort of thing," protested his cousin; "isn't this in your line?"

"Yes; I sat and talked to her half an hour and did not know she was blind. She has a pair of magnificent deep-blue eyes; nobody, talking to her, could suspect such a thing. Still—her eyes were shaded by her hat."

"What kind of blindness is it?" asked Coursay, in a shocked voice.

"I think I know," said Lansing. "I think there can be little doubt that she has a rather unusual form of lamellar cataract."

"Curable?" motioned Coursay.

"I haven't examined her; how could I— But—I'm going to do it."

"And if you operate?" asked Coursay, hopefully.

"Operate? Yes—yes, of course. It is needling, you know, with probability of repetition. We expect absorption to do the work for us—bar accidents and other things."

"When will you operate?" inquired Coursay.

Lansing broke out, harshly: "God knows! That swindler, Munn, keeps her a prisoner. Doctors long ago urged her to submit to an operation; Munn refused, and he and his deluded women have been treating her by prayer for years—the miserable mountebank!"

"You mean that he won't let you try to help her?"

"I mean just exactly that, Jack."

Coursay got up with his clinched hands swinging and his eager face red as a pippin. "Why, then," he said, "we'll go and get her! Come on; I can't sit here and let such things happen!"

Lansing laughed the laugh of a school-boy bent on deviltry.

"Good old Jack! That's the sort of advice I wanted," he said, affectionately. "We may see our names in the morning papers for this; but who cares? We may be arrested for a few unimportant and absurd things—but who cares? Munn will probably sue us; who cares? At any rate, we're reasonably certain of a double-leaded column in the yellow press; but do you give a tinker's damn?"

"Not one!" said Coursay, calmly.

Then they went down to dinner.

Sprowl, being unwell, dined in his own rooms; Agatha Sprowl was more witty and brilliant and charming than ever; but Coursay did not join her on the veranda that evening, and she sat for two hours enduring the platitudes of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, and planning serious troubles for Lansing, to whose interference she attributed Coursay's non-appearance.

But Coursay and Lansing had other business in hand that night. Fortune, too, favored them when they arrived at the O'Hara house; for there, leaning on the decaying gate, stood Eileen O'Hara, her face raised to the sky as though seeking in the soft star radiance which fell upon her lids a celestial balm for her sightless eyes.

She was alone; she heard Lansing's step, and knew it, too. From within the house came the deadened sound of women's voices singing:

"Light of the earth and sky, Unbind mine eyes, Lest I in darkness lie While my soul dies. Blind, at Thy feet I fall, All blindly kneel, Fainting, Thy name I call; Touch me and heal!"

In the throbbing hush of the starlight a whippoorwill called three times; the breeze rose in the forest; a little wind came fragrantly, puff on puff, along the road, stirring the silvery dust.

* * * * *

She laid one slim hand in Lansing's; steadily and noiselessly they traversed the dew-wet meadow, crossed the river by the second bridge, and so came to the dark club-house under the trees.

There was nobody visible except the steward when they entered the hall.

"Two rooms and a bath, John," said Lansing, quietly; and followed the steward up the stairs, guiding his blind charge.

The rooms were on the north angle; Lansing and Coursay inspected them carefully, gave the steward proper direction, and dismissed him.

"Get me a telegram blank," said Lansing. Coursay brought one. His cousin pencilled a despatch, and the young man took it and left the room.

The girl was sitting on the bed, silent, intent, following Lansing with her sightless eyes.

"Do you trust me?" he asked, pleasantly.

"Yes, ... oh, yes, with all my heart!"

He steadied his voice. "I think I can help you—I am sure I can. I have sent to New York for Dr. Courtney Thayer."

He drew a long breath; her beauty almost unnerved him. "Thayer will operate; he's the best of all. Are you afraid?"

She lifted one hand and held it out, hesitating. He took it.

"No, not afraid," she said.

"You are wise; there is no need for fear. All will come right, my child."

She listened intently.

"It is necessary in such operations that the patient should, above all, be cheerful and—and happy—"

"Oh, yes, ... and I am happy! Truly! truly!" she breathed.

"—and brave, and patient, and obedient—and—" His voice trembled a trifle. "You must lie very still," he ended, hastily.

"Will you be here?"

"Yes—yes, of course!"

"Then I will lie very still."

He left her curled up in an easy-chair, smiling at him with blind eyes; he scarcely found his way down-stairs for all his eyesight. He stumbled to the grill-room door, felt for the knob, and flung it open.

A flood of yellow light struck him like a blow; through the smoke he saw the wine-flushed faces of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent staring at him.

"Gad, Lansing!" said the Major, "you're white and shaky as a ninety-nine-cent toy lamb. Come in and have a drink, m'boy!"

"I wanted to say," said Lansing, "that I have a patient in 5 and 6. It's an emergency case; I've wired for Courtney Thayer. I wish to ask the privilege and courtesy of the club for my patient. It's unusual; it's intrusive. Absolute and urgent necessity is my plea."

The two old gentlemen appeared startled, but they hastily assured Lansing that his request would be honored; and Lansing went away to pace the veranda until Coursay returned from the telegraph station.

In the grill-room Major Brent's pop eyes were fixed on the Colonel in inflamed inquiry.

"Damme!" snapped the Colonel, "does that young man take this club for a hospital?"

"He'll be washing bandages in the river next; he'll poison the trout with his antiseptic stuffs!" suggested the Major, shuddering.

"The club's going to the dogs!" said the Colonel, with a hearty oath.

But he did not know how near to the dogs the club already was.

V

It is perfectly true that the club and the dogs were uncomfortably close together. A week later the crisis came when Munn, in a violent rage, accused Sprowl of spiriting away his ward, Eileen O'Hara. But when Sprowl at last comprehended that the girl and the papers had really disappeared, he turned like a maddened pig on Munn, tore the signed checks to shreds before his eyes, and cursed him steadily as long as he remained within hearing.

As for Munn, his game appeared to be up. He hurried to New York, and spent a month or two attempting to find some trace of his ward, then his money gave out. He returned to his community and wrote a cringing letter to Sprowl, begging him to buy the O'Hara land for next to nothing, and risk the legality of the transfer. To which Sprowl paid no attention. A week later Munn and the Shining Band left for Munnville, Maine.

It was vaguely understood at the club that Lansing had a patient in 5 and 6.

"Probably a rich woman whom he can't afford to lose," suggested Sprowl, with a sneer; "but I'm cursed if I can see why he should turn this club into a drug-shop to make money in!" And the Colonel and the Major agreed that it was indecent in the extreme.

To his face, of course, Sprowl, the Colonel, and the Major treated Lansing with perfect respect; but the faint odor of antiseptics from rooms 5 and 6 made them madder and madder every time they noticed it.

Meanwhile young Coursay had a free bridle; Lansing was never around to interfere, and he drove and rode and fished and strolled with Agatha Sprowl until neither he nor the shameless beauty knew whether they were standing on their heads or their heels. To be in love was a new sensation to Agatha Sprowl; to believe himself in love was nothing new to Coursay, but the flavor never palled.

What they might have done—what, perhaps, they had already decided to do—nobody but they knew. The chances are that they would have bolted if they had not run smack into that rigid sentinel who guards the pathway of life. The sentinel is called Fate. And it came about in the following manner:

Dr. Courtney Thayer arrived one cool day early in October; Lansing met him with a quiet smile, and, together, these eminent gentlemen entered rooms 5 and 6.

A few moments later Courtney Thayer came out, laughing, followed by Lansing, who also appeared to be a prey to mirth.

"She's charming—she's perfectly charming!" said Courtney Thayer. "Where the deuce do these Yankee convent people get that elusive Continental flavor? Her father must have been a gentleman."

"He was an Irish lumberman," said Lansing. After a moment he added: "So you won't come back, doctor?"

"No, it's not necessary; you know that. I've an operation to-morrow in Manhattan; I must get back to town. Wish I could stay and shoot grouse with you, but I can't."

"Come up for the fall flight of woodcock; I'll wire you when it's on," urged Lansing.

"Perhaps; good-bye."

Lansing took his outstretched hand in both of his. "There is no use in my trying to tell you what you have done for me, doctor," he said.

Thayer regarded him keenly. "Thought I did it for her," he remarked.

Instantly Lansing's face turned red-hot. Thayer clasped the young man's hands and shook them till they ached.

"You're all right, my boy—you're all right!" he said, heartily; and was gone down the stairs, two at a jump—a rather lively proceeding for the famous and dignified Courtney Thayer.

Lansing turned and entered rooms 5 and 6. His patient was standing by the curtained window. "Do you want to know your fate?" he asked, lightly.

She turned and looked at him out of her lovely eyes; the quaint, listening expression in her face still remained, but she saw him, this time.

"Am I well?" she asked, calmly.

"Yes; ... perfectly."

She sat down by the window, her slender hands folded, her eyes on him.

"And now," she asked, "what am I to do?"

He understood, and bent his head. He had an answer ready, trembling on his lips; but a horror of presuming on her gratitude kept him silent.

"Am I to go back ... to him?" she said, faintly.

"God forbid!" he blurted out. With all his keen eyesight, how could he fail to see the adoration in her eyes, on her mute lips' quivering curve, in every line of her body? But the brutality of asking for that which her gratitude might not withhold froze him. It was no use; he could not speak.

"Then—what? Tell me; I will do it," she said, in a desolate voice. "Of course I cannot stay here now."

Something in his haggard face set her heart beating heavily; then for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She covered her eyes with a swift gesture.

"Is it pain?" he asked, quickly. "Let me see your eyes!" Her hands covered them. He came to her; she stood up, and he drew her fingers from her eyes and looked into them steadily. But what he saw there he alone knows; for he bent closer, shaking in every limb; and both her arms crept to his shoulders and her clasped hands tightened around his neck.

Which was doubtless an involuntary muscular affection incident on successful operations for lamellar or zonular cataract.

* * * * *

That day they opened the steel box. She understood little of what he read to her; presently he stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence and remained staring, reading on and on in absorbed silence.

Content, serene, numbed with her happiness, she watched him sleepily.

He muttered under his breath: "Sprowl! What a fool! What a cheap fool! And yet not one among us even suspected him of that!"

After a long time he looked up at the girl, blankly at first, and with a grimace of disgust. "You see," he said, and gave a curious laugh—"you see that—that you own all this land of ours—as far as I can make out."

After a long explanation she partly understood, and laughed outright, a clear child's laugh without a trace of that sad undertone he knew so well.

"But we are not going to take it away from your club—are we?" she asked.

"No," he said; "let the club have the land—your land! What do we care? We will never come here again!" He sat a moment, thinking, then sprang up. "We will go to New York to-morrow," he said; "and I'll just step out and say good-bye to Sprowl—I think he and his wife are also going to-morrow; I think they're going to Europe, to live! I'm sure they are; and that they will never come back."

And, curiously enough, that is exactly what they did; and they are there yet. And their establishment in the American colony is the headquarters for all nobility in exile, including the chivalrous Orleans.

Which is one sort of justice—the Lansing sort; and, anyway, Coursay survived and married an actress a year later. And the club still remains in undisturbed possession of Eileen Lansing's land; and Major Brent is now its president.

As for Munn, he has permanently retired to Munnville, Maine, where, it is reported, he has cured several worthy and wealthy people by the simple process of prayer.



ONE MAN IN A MILLION

I

"Do you desire me to marry him?" asked Miss Castle, quietly.

"Let me finish," said her uncle. "Jane," he added, turning on his sister, "if you could avoid sneezing for a few moments, I should be indebted to you."

Miss Jane Garcide, a sallow lady of forty, who suffered with colds all winter and hay-fever all summer, meekly left the room.

Miss Castle herself leaned on the piano, tearing the pink petals from a half-withered rose, while her guardian, the Hon. John Garcide, finished what he had to say and pulled out his cigar-case with decision.

"I have only to add," he said, "that James J. Crawford is one man in a million."

Her youthful adoration of Garcide had changed within a few years to a sweet-tempered indifference. He was aware of this; he was anxious to learn whether the change had also affected her inherited passion for truthfulness.

"Do you remember a promise you once made?" he inquired, lighting his cigar with care.

"Yes," she said, calmly.

"When was it?"

"On my tenth birthday."

He looked out of the heavily curtained window.

"Of course you could not be held to such a promise," he remarked.

"There is no need to hold me to it," she answered, flushing up.

Her delicate sense of honor amused him; he lay back in his arm-chair, enjoying his cigar.

"It is curious," he said, "that you cannot recall meeting Mr. Crawford last winter."

"A girl has an opportunity to forget hundreds of faces after her first season," she said.

There was another pause; then Garcide went on: "I am going to ask you to marry him."

Her face paled a trifle; she bent her head in acquiescence. Garcide smiled. It had always been that way with the Castles. Their word, once given, ended all matters. And now Garcide was gratified to learn the value of a promise made by a child of ten.

"I wonder," said Garcide, plaintively, "why you never open your heart to me, Hilda?"

"I wonder, too," she said; "my father did."

Garcide turned his flushed face to the window.

Years before, when the firm of Garcide & Castle went to pieces, Peter Castle stood by the wreck to the end, patching it with his last dollar. But the wreck broke up, and he drifted piteously with the debris until a kindly current carried him into the last harbor of all—the port of human derelicts.

Garcide, however, contrived to cling to some valuable flotsam and paddle into calm water, and anchor.

After a few years he built a handsome house above Fiftieth Street; after a few more years he built a new wing for Saint Berold's Hospital; and after a few more years he did other things equally edifying, but which, if mentioned, might identify him.

Church work had always interested him. As a speculation in moral obligation, he adopted Peter Castle's orphan, who turned to him in a passion of gratitude and blind devotion. And as she bade fair to rival her dead mother in beauty, and as rich men marry beauty when it is in the market, the Hon. John Garcide decided to control the child's future. A promise at ten years is quickly made, but he had never forgotten it, and she could not forget.

And now Garcide needed her as he needed mercy from Ophir Steel, which was slowly crushing his own steel syndicate to powder.

The struggle between Steel Plank and James J. Crawford's Ophir Steel is historical. The pure love of fighting was in Crawford; he fought Garcide to a standstill and then kicked him, filling Garcide with a mixture of terror and painful admiration.

But sheer luck caught at Garcide's coat-tails and hung there. Crawford, prowling in the purlieus of society, had seen Miss Castle.

The next day Crawford came into Garcide's office and accepted a chair with such a humble and uneasy smile that Garcide mistook his conciliatory demeanor and attempted to bully him. But when he found out what Crawford wanted, he nearly fainted in an attempt to conceal his astonishment and delight.

"Do you think I'd buy you off with an innocent child?" he said, lashing himself into a good imitation of an insulted gentleman.

Crawford looked out of the window, then rose and walked towards the door.

"Do you think you can bribe me?" shouted Garcide after him. Crawford hesitated.

"Come back here," said Garcide, firmly; "I want you to explain yourself."

"I can't," muttered Crawford.

"Well—try, anyway," said Garcide, more amiably.

And now this was the result of that explanation, at least one of the results; and Miss Castle had promised to wed a gentleman in Ophir Steel named Crawford, at the convenience of the Hon. John Garcide.

The early morning sunshine fell across the rugs in the music-room, filling the gloom with golden lights. It touched a strand of hair on Miss Castle's bent head.

"You'll like him," said Garcide, guiltily.

Her hand hung heavily on the piano keys.

"You have no other man in mind?" he asked.

"No, ... no man."

Garcide chewed the end of his cigar.

"Crawford's a bashful man. Don't make it hard for him," he said.

She swung around on the gilded music-stool, one white hand lying among the ivory keys.

"I shall spare us both," she said; "I shall tell him that it is settled."

Garcide rose; she received his caress with composure. He made another grateful peck at her chin.

"Why don't you take a quiet week or two in the country?" he suggested, cheerfully, "Go up to the Sagamore Club; Jane will go with you. You can have the whole place to yourselves. You always liked nature and—er—all that, eh?"

"Oh yes," she said, indifferently.

That afternoon the Hon. John Garcide sent a messenger to James J. Crawford with the following letter:

"MY DEAR CRAWFORD,—Your manly and straightforward request for permission to address my ward, Miss Castle, has profoundly touched me.

"I have considered the matter, I may say earnestly considered it.

"Honor and the sacred duties of guardianship forbid that I should interfere in any way with my dear child's happiness if she desires to place it in your keeping. On the other hand, honor and decency prevent me from attempting to influence her to any decision which might prove acceptable to myself.

"I can therefore only grant you the permission you desire to address my ward. The rest lies with a propitious Providence.

"Cordially yours, JOHN GARCIDE.

"P.S.—My sister, Miss Garcide, and Miss Castle are going to the Sagamore Club to-night. I'll take you up there whenever you can get away."

To which came answer by messenger:

"Hon. John Garcide:

"MY DEAR GARCIDE,—Can't go for two weeks. My fool nephew Jim is on his vacation, and I don't know where he is prowling. Hastily yours, "JAMES J. CRAWFORD.

"P. S.—There's a director's meeting at three. Come down and we'll settle all quarrels."

To this the Hon. John Garcide telegraphed: "All right," and hurriedly prepared to escort his sister and Miss Castle to the mid-day express for Sagamore Hills.

II

Miss Castle usually rose with the robins, when there were any in the neighborhood. There were plenty on the lawn around the Sagamore Club that dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating their endless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of the robins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird's whine floated earthward the melody of the golden orioles.

Miss Castle, fresh from the bath, breakfasted in her own rooms with an appetite that astonished her.

She was a wholesome, fresh-skinned girl, with a superb body, limbs a trifle heavy in the strict classical sense, straight-browed, blue-eyed, and very lovely and Greek.

Pensively she ate her toast, tossing a few crumbs at the robins; pensively she disposed of two eggs, a trout, and all the chocolate, and looked into the pitcher for more cream.

The swelling bird-music only intensified the deep, sweet country silence which brooded just beyond the lawn's wet limits; she saw the flat river tumbling in the sunlight; she saw the sky over all, its blue mystery untroubled by a cloud.

"I love all that," she said, dreamily, to her maid behind her. "Never mind my hair now; I want the wind to blow it."

The happy little winds of June, loitering among the lilacs, heard; and they came and blew her bright hair across her eyes, puff after puff of perfumed balm, and stirred the delicate stuff that clung to her, and she felt their caress on her bare feet.

"I mean to go and wade in that river," she said to her maid. "Dress me very quickly."

But when she was dressed the desire for childish things had passed away, and she raised her grave eyes to the reflected eyes in the mirror, studying them in silence.

"After all," she said, aloud, "I am young enough to have found happiness—if they had let me.... The sunshine is full of it, out-doors.... I could have found it.... I was not meant for men.... Still ... it is all in the future yet. I will learn not to be afraid."

She made a little effort to smile at herself in the mirror, but her courage could not carry her as far as that. So, with a quick, quaint gesture of adieu, she turned and walked rapidly out into the hallway.

Miss Garcide was in bed, sneezing patiently. "I won't be out for weeks," said the poor lady, "so you will have to amuse yourself alone."

Miss Castle kissed her and went away lightly down the polished stairs to the great hall.

The steward came up to wish her good-morning, and to place the resources of the club at her disposal.

"I don't know," she said, hesitating at the veranda door; "I think a sun-bath is all I care for. You may hang a hammock under the maples, if you will. I suppose," she added, "that I am quite alone at the club?"

"One gentleman arrived this morning," said the steward—"Mr. Crawford."

She looked back, poised lightly in the doorway through which the morning sunshine poured. All the color had left her face. "Mr. Crawford," she said, in a dull voice.

"He has gone out after trout," continued the steward, briskly; "he is a rare rod, ma'am, is Mr. Crawford. He caught the eight-pound fish—perhaps you noticed it on the panel in the billiard-room."

Miss Castle came into the hall again, and stepped over to the register. Under her signature, "Miss Castle and maid," she saw "J. Crawford, New York." The ink was still blue and faint.

She turned and walked out into the sunshine.

The future was no longer a gray, menacing future; it had become suddenly the terrifying present, and its shadow fell sharply around her in the sunshine.

Now all the courage of her race must be summoned, and must respond to the summons. The end of all was at hand; but when had a Castle ever flinched at the face of fate under any mask?

She raised her resolute head; her eyes matched the sky—clear, unclouded, fathomless.

In hours of deep distress the sound of her own voice had always helped her to endure; and now, as she walked across the lawn bareheaded, she told herself not to grieve over a just debt to be paid, not to quail because life held for her nothing of what she had dreamed.

If there was a tremor now and then in her low voice, none but the robins heard it; if she lay flung face downward in the grasses, under the screen of alders by the water, there was no one but the striped chipmunk to jeer and mock.

"Now listen, you silly girl," she whispered; "he cannot take away the sky and the sunshine from you! He cannot blind and deafen you, silly! Cry if you must, you little coward!—you will marry him all the same."

Suddenly sitting up, alert, she heard something singing. It was the river flowing close beside her.

She pushed away the screen of leaves and stretched out full length, looking down into the water.

A trout lay there; his eyes were shining with an opal tint, his scarlet spots blazed like jewels.

And as she lay there, her bright hair tumbled about her face, she heard, above the river's monotone, a sharp, whiplike sound—swis-s-sh—and a silvery thread flashed out across her vision. It was a fishing-line and leader, and the fisherman who had cast it was standing fifty feet away up-stream, hip-deep in the sunlit water.

Swish! swish! and the long line flew back, straightened far behind him, and again lengthened out, the single yellow-and-gilt fly settling on the water just above the motionless trout, who simply backed off down-stream.

But there were further troubles for the optimistic angler; a tough alder stem, just under water, became entangled in the line; the fisherman gave a cautious jerk; the hook sank into the water-soaked wood, buried to the barb.

"Oh, the deuce!" said the fisherman, calmly.

Before she could realize what he was about, he had waded across the shallows and seized the alder branch. A dash of water showered her as he shook the hook free; she stood up with an involuntary gasp and met the astonished eyes of the fisherman.

He was a tall, sunburned young fellow, with powerful shoulders and an easy, free-limbed carriage; he was also soaking wet and streaked with mud.

"Upon my word," he said, "I never saw you! Awf'lly sorry; hope I haven't spoiled your sport—but I have. You were fishing, of course?"

"No, I was only looking," she said. "Of course I've spoiled your sport."

"Not at all," he said, laughing; "that alder twig did for me."

"But there was a trout lying there—I saw him; and the trout saw me, so of course he wouldn't rise to your cast. And I'm exceedingly sorry," she ended, smiling in spite of herself.

Her hair was badly rumpled; she had been crying, and he could see it, but he had never looked upon such tear-stained, smiling, and dishevelled loveliness.

As he looked and marvelled, her smile died out; it came to her with a distinct shock that this water-logged specimen of sun-tanned manhood must be Crawford.

"Are you?" she said, scarcely aware that she spoke.

"What?" he asked, puzzled.

"Mr. Crawford?"

"Why, yes—and, of course, you are Miss Castle," he replied, smiling easily. "I saw your name in the guest-book this morning. Awf'lly glad you came, Miss Castle; hope you'll let me show you where the big fellows lie."

"You mean the fish," she said, with composure.

The shock of suddenly realizing that this man was the man she had to marry confused her; she made an effort to get things back into proper perspective, for the river was swimming before her eyes, and in her ears rang a strangely pleasant voice—Crawford's—saying all sorts of good-humored things, which she heard but scarcely comprehended.

Instinctively she raised her hands to touch her disordered hair; she stood there naively twisting it into shape again, her eyes constantly reverting to the sun-tanned face before her.

"And I have the pleasure of knowing your guardian, Mr. Garcide, very slightly—in a business way," he was saying, politely.

"Ophir Steel," she said.

He laughed.

"Oh, we are making a great battle," he said. "I'm only hoping we may come to an understanding with Mr. Garcide."

"I thought you had already come to an understanding," she observed, calmly.

"Have we? I hope so; I had not heard that," he said, quickly. "How did you hear?"

Without warning she flushed scarlet to her neck; and she was as amazed as he at the surging color staining her white skin.

She could not endure that—she could not face him—so she bent her head a little in recognition of his presence and stepped past him, out along the river-bank.

He looked after her, wondering what he could have said.

She wondered, too, and her wonder grew that instead of self-pity, repugnance, and deep dread, she should feel such a divine relief from the terror that had possessed her.

Now at least she knew the worst. This was the man!

She strove to place him, to recall his face. She could not. All along she had pictured Crawford as an older man. And this broad-shouldered, tanned young fellow was Crawford, after all! Where could her eyes have been? How absurd that her indifference should have so utterly blinded her!

She stood a moment on the lawn, closing her eyes.

Oh, now she had no difficulty in recalling his face—in fact the difficulty was to shut it out, for it was before her eyes, open or shut—it was before her when she entered her bedroom and sank into a cushioned chair by the breezy window. And she took her burning cheeks in both hands and rested her elbows on her knees.

Truly terror had fled. It shamed her to find herself thanking God that her fate was to lie in the keeping of this young man. Yet it was natural, too, for the child had nigh died of horror, though the courage of the Castles had held her head high in the presence of the inevitable. And now suddenly into her gray and hopeless future, peopled by the phantoms of an old man, stepped a living, smiling young fellow, with gentle manners and honest speech, and a quick courtesy which there was no mistaking.

She had no mother—nobody to talk to—so she had long ago made a confidante of her own reflection in the looking-glass. And to the mirror she now went, meeting the reflected eyes shyly, yet smiling with friendly sympathy:

"Silly! to frighten yourself! It is all over now. He's young and tall and sunburned. I don't think he knows a great deal—but don't be frightened, he is not a bit dreadful, ... only ... it is a pity, ... but I suppose he was in love with me, ... and, after all, it doesn't matter, ... only I am ... sorry ... for him.... If he had only cared for a girl who could love him!... I don't suppose I could, ... ever!... But I will be very kind to him, ... to make up."

III

She saw him every day; she dined at the club table now.

Miss Garcide's hay-fever increased with the ripening summer, and she lay in her room with all the windows closed, sneezing and reading Anthony Trollope.

When Miss Castle told her that Mr. Crawford was a guest at the club, Miss Garcide wept over her for an hour.

"I feel like weeping, too," said Miss Castle, tremulously—"but not over myself."

"Dot over hib?" inquired Miss Garcide.

"Yes, over him. He ought to marry a girl who could fall in love with him."

Meanwhile Crawford was dining every evening with her at the great club table, telling her of the day's sport, and how a black bear had come splashing across the shallows within a few rods of where he stood fishing, and how the deer had increased, and were even nibbling the succulent green stalks in the kitchen garden after nightfall.

During the day she found herself looking forward to his return and his jolly, spirited stories, always gay and humorous, and never tiresome, technical, nor conceited, although for three years he had held the club cup for the best fish taken on Sagamore water.

She took sun-baths in her hammock; she read novels; she spent hours in reverie, blue eyes skyward, arms under her head, swayed in her hammock by the delicious winds of a perfect June.

All her composure and common-sense had returned. She began to experience a certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford—a feeling almost maternal.

"He's so amusingly shy about speaking," she told Miss Garcide; "I suppose he's anxious and bashful. I think I'll tell him that it is all arranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don't see why I don't; I'm not a bit embarrassed."

But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle had not taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover.

"Oh, this is simply dreadful," she argued with herself. "Besides, I want to know how soon the man expects to marry me. I've a few things to purchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together in a day, he's a—a man!"

That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide as scrupulously as she kept all her promises.

She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear and overcome it.

"I'm going to walk down to the little foot-bridge," she said, steadily, examining the coffee in her tiny cup; "and if you will stroll down with your pipe, I ... I will tell you something."

"That will be very jolly," he said. "There's a full moon; I mean to have a try at a thumping big fish in the pool above."

She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door.

Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank.

This is what he wrote:

"James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N.Y.: "I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return? "JAMES H. CRAWFORD."

The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking and thinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that he should miss very, very soon.

Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the little foot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn.

A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face. She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodland rivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon, and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wings of moths.

"Surely," she said, aloud—"surely there is something in the world besides men. I love this—all of it! I do indeed. I could find happiness here; I do not think I was made for men."

For a long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her whole body saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then she raised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenly became faintly spiced with tobacco smoke.

Where did the smoke come from? She turned instinctively. On a rock up-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a white fly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out into the dusk.

After a few moments' casting, she saw him step ashore and saunter towards the bridge, where she was standing; then his step jarred the structure and he came up, cap in one hand, rod in the other.

"I thought perhaps you might like to try a cast," he said, pleasantly. "There's a good-sized fish in the pool above; I raised him twice. He'll scale close to five pounds, I fancy."

"Thank you," said Miss Castle; "that is very generous of you, because you are deliberately sacrificing the club loving-cup if I catch that fish."

He said, laughing: "I've held the cup before. Try it, Miss Castle; that is a five-pound fish, and the record this spring is four and a half."

She took the rod; he went first and she held out her hand so that he could steady her across the stones and out into the dusk.

"My skirts are soaked with the dew, anyway," she said. "I don't mind a wetting."

He unslung his landing-net and waited ready; she sent the line whirling into the darkness.

"To the right," he said.

For ten minutes she stood there casting in silence. Once a splash in the shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat.

"By-the-way," she said, quietly, over her shoulder, "I know why you and I have met here."

And as Crawford said nothing she reeled in her line, and held out her hand to him as a signal that she wished to come ashore.

He aided her, taking the rod and guiding her carefully across the dusky stepping-stones to the bank.

She shook out her damp skirts, then raised her face, which had grown a trifle pale.

"I will marry you, Mr. Crawford," she said, bravely,—"and I hope you will make me love you. Mr. Garcide wishes it.... I understand ... that you wish it. You must not feel embarrassed, ... nor let me feel embarrassed. Come and talk it over. Shall we?"

There was a rustic seat on the river-bank; she sat down in one corner.

His face was in shadow; he had dropped his rod and landing-net abruptly. And now he took an uncertain step towards her and sat down at her side.

"I want you to make me love you," she said, frankly; "I hope you will; I shall do all I can to help you. But—unless I do—will you remember that?—I do not love you." As he was silent, she went on: "Take me as a comrade; I will go where you wish. I am really a good comrade; I can do what men do. You shall see! It will be pleasant, I think."

After a little while he spoke in a low voice which was not perfectly steady: "Miss Castle, I am going to tell you something which you must know. I do not believe that Mr. Garcide has authorized me to offer myself to you."

"He told me that he desired it," she said. "That is why he brought us together. And he also said," she added, hastily, "that you were somewhat bashful. So I thought it best to make it easy for us both. I hope I have."

Crawford sat motionless for a long while. At last he passed his hands over his eyes, leaning forward and looking into her face.

"I've simply got to be honest with you," he said; "I know there is a mistake."

"No, there is no mistake," she said, bending her head and looking him in the eyes—"unless you have made the mistake—unless," she said, quickly—"you do not want me."

"Want you!" he stammered, catching fire of a sudden—"want you, you beautiful child! I love you if ever man loved on earth! Want you?" His hand fell heavily on hers, and closed. For an instant their palms lay close together; her heart almost stopped; then a swift flame flew to her face and she struggled to withdraw her fingers twisted in his.

"You must not do that," she said, breathlessly. "I do not love you—I warned you!"

He said: "You must love me! Can't you understand? You made me love you—you made me! Listen to me—it is all a mistake—but it is too late now. I did not dare even think of you—I have simply got to tell you the truth—I did not dare think of you—I must say it—and I can't understand how I could ever have seen you and not loved you. But when you spoke—when I touched you—"

"Please, please," she said, faintly, "let me go! It is not a mistake; I—I am glad that you love me; I will try to love you. I want to—I believe I can—"

"You must!"

"Yes, ... I will.... Please let me go!"

Breathless and crimson, she fell back into her corner, staring at him. He dropped his arm on the back of the rustic seat.

Presently he laughed uncertainly, and struck his forehead with his open hand.

"It's a mistake," he said; "and if it is a mistake, Heaven help the other man!"

She watched him with curious dismay. Never could she have believed that the touch of a man's hand could thrill her; never had she imagined that the words of a man could set her heart leaping to meet his stammered vows. A new shame set her very limbs quaking as she strove to rise. The distress in her eyes, the new fear, the pitiful shyness, called to him for mercy.

For a miracle he understood the mute appeal, and he took her hand in his quietly and bade her good-night, saying he would stay and smoke awhile.

"Good-night," she said; "I am really tired. I would rather you stayed here. Do you mind?"

"No," he said.

"Then I shall go back alone."

He watched her across the lawn. When she had gone half-way, she looked back and saw him standing there in the moonlight.

And that night, as her little silver hand-glass reflected her brilliant cheeks, she veiled her face in her bright hair and knelt down by her bedside.

But all she could say was, "I love him—truly I love him!" which was one kind of prayer, after all.

IV

A deep, sweet happiness awoke her ere the earliest robin chirped. Never since the first pink light touched Eden had such a rosy day dawned for any maid on earth.

She awoke in love; her enchanted eyes unclosed on a world she had never known.

Unashamed, she held out her arms to the waking world and spoke her lover's name aloud. Then the young blood leaped in her, and her eyes were like stars after a rain.

Oh, she must hasten now, for there was so little time to live in the world, and every second counted. Healthy of body, wholesome of soul, innocent and ardent in her new-born happiness, she could scarcely endure the rush of golden moments lost in an impetuous bath, in twisting up her bright hair, in the quick knotting of a ribbon, the click of a buckle on knee and shoe.

Then, as she slipped down the stairs into the darkened hall, trepidation seized her, for she heard his step.

He came swinging along the hallway; she stood still, trembling. He came up quickly and took her hands; she did not move; his arm encircled her waist; he lifted her head; it lay back on his shoulder, and her eyes met his.

"All day together," he was saying; and her soul leaped to meet his words, but she could not speak.

He held her at arms'-length, laughing, a little troubled.

"Mystery of mysteries," he said, under his breath; "there is some blessed Heaven-directed mistake in this. Is there, sweetheart?"

"No," she said.

"And if there was?"

"Can you ask?"

"Then come to breakfast, heart of my heart!—the moments are flying very swiftly, and there is only this day left—until to-morrow. Listen! I hear the steward moving like a gray rat in the pantry. Can we endure a steward in Eden?"

"Only during breakfast," she said, laughing. "I smell the wheaten flapjacks, and, oh, I am famished!"

There have been other breakfasts—Barmecide breakfasts compared with their first crust broken in love.

But they ate—oh, indeed, they ate everything before them, from flapjacks to the piles of little, crisp trout. And they might have called for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing, presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford's heart stopped, and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake.

She, too, suddenly apprehensive, sat rigid, the smile dying out in her eyes; and when he finally took the envelope and tore it open, she shivered.

"Crawford, Sagamore Club:

"Ophir has consolidated with Steel Plank. You take charge of London office. Make arrangements to catch steamer leaving a week from to-morrow. Garcide and I will be at Sagamore to-night. JAMES J. CRAWFORD."

He sat staring at the telegram; she, vaguely apprehensive for the safety of this new happiness of hers, clasped her hands tightly in her lap and waited.

"Any answer, sir?" asked the steward.

Crawford took the offered telegram blank and mechanically wrote:

"Instructions received. Will expect you and Garcide to-night. JAMES CRAWFORD."

She sat, twisting her fingers on her knees, watching him in growing apprehension. The steward took the telegram.

Crawford looked at her with a ghastly smile.

They rose together, instinctively, and walked to the porch.

"Oh yes," he said, under his breath, "such happiness was too perfect. Magic is magic—it never lasts."

"What is it?" she asked, faintly.

He picked up his cap, which was lying on a chair.

"Let's get away, somewhere," he said. "Do you mind coming with me—alone?"

"No," she said.

There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle and setting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river, side by side.

Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, they embarked on Sagamore Water.

The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade, the spray floated shoreward.

V

Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water stretched away into the forest's sombre depths, barred here and there by dusty sunbeams.

Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft swept the yellow gravel.

Knee to knee, vis-a-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation.

"I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow," she said, looking at him.

The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she would not permit him to touch her.

"See to what you have brought me!" she said. "I'm utterly unable to live without you. And now what are you going to do with me?"

Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid it against his face.

"There is a way," he said.

"A way?"

"Shall I lead? Would you follow?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, amused.

"There is a way," he repeated. "That thread of a brook leads to it."

He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream, scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its mounds of moss.

He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoe swung westward.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.

"If we turned back now," she said, "it would be sunset before we reached the club."

"What do we care?" he laughed. "Look!"

Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the sinking sun.

Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moist meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the stream wound in pools of gold.

The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole in drops of fire.

There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered on something that might have been a long reed quivering.

"An old friend fishing yonder," he said, quietly; "I knew he would be there." He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. "That is the parson of Foxville," he said. "We will need him before we go to London."

She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaning flashed out like a sunbeam.

"Do—do you wish—that—now?" she faltered.

He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.

"No, no!"—she whispered, with bent head—"I cannot; don't take me so—so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it."

He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.

"Oh, we are quite mad," she said, unsteadily.

"I am glad we are," he said.

The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh in flickering flight.

The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into his pool and swing shoreward.

The parson of Foxville was a very old man—almost too old to fish for trout.

Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.

Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered at her with his aged eyes, saying, "You are quite mad, my child, and very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be much safer if you were married."

Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.

A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths—that was her fate—with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.

And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husband and shambled away across the meadows.

Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing the bride of an hour, her head on her husband's knees. The stars came out to watch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle's wake, stringing away, twinkling in the starlight.

Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on his knees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead.

A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyes like rubies in the dark.

Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windows of the house glimmered, reflected in the water.

Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, rising in chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting.

"I've a word to say to you," snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in his ward's ear—"and another word for your fool of an aunt!"

She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. "What do you mean?" she stammered; "we—we are married. Will you not speak to my—my husband?"

A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh.

"You're all right, Jim," said the elder Crawford, slowly. "Ophir Steel won't slip through your fingers when I'm under the sod. Been married long, Jim?"



THE FIRE-WARDEN

I

"And of course what I buy is my own," continued Burleson, patiently. "No man here will question that, I suppose?"

For a moment there was silence in the cross-roads store; then a lank, mud-splashed native arose from behind the stove, shoving his scarred hands deep into the ragged pockets of his trousers.

"Young man," he said, harshly, "there's a few things you can't buy; you may think you can buy 'em—you may pay for 'em, too—but they can't be bought an' sold. You thought you bought Grier's tract; you thought you bought a lot o' deer an' birds an' fish, several thousand acres in timber, and a dozen lakes. An' you paid for 'em, too. But, sonny, you was took in; you paid for 'em, but you didn't buy 'em, because Grier couldn't sell God's free critters. He fooled ye that time."

"Is that the way you regard it, Santry?" asked Burleson. "Is that the way these people regard private property?"

"I guess it is," replied the ragged man, resuming his seat on the flour-barrel. "I cal'late the Lord A'mighty fashioned His wild critters f'r to peramble round about, offerin' a fair mark an' no favor to them that's smart enough to git 'em with buck, bird-shot, or bullet. Live wild critters ain't for sale; they never was made to buy an' sell. The spryest gits 'em—an' that's all about it, I guess, Mister Burleson."

A hard-faced young man leaning against the counter, added significantly: "We talked some to Grier, an' he sold out. He come here, too, just like you."

The covert menace set two spots of color deepening in young Burleson's lean cheeks; but he answered calmly:

"What a man believes to be his own he seldom abandons from fear of threats."

"That's kinder like our case," observed old man Santry, chewing vigorously.

Another man leaned over and whispered to a neighbor, who turned a grim eye on Burleson without replying.

As for Burleson and his argument, a vicious circle had been completed, and there was little chance of an understanding; he saw that plainly, but, loath to admit it, turned towards old man Santry once more.

"If what has been common rumor is true," he said, "Mr. Grier, from whom I bought the Spirit Lake tract, was rough in defending what he believed to be his own. I want to be decent; I desire to preserve the game and the timber, but not at the expense of human suffering. You know better than I do what has been the history of Fox Cross-roads. Twenty-five years ago your village was a large one; you had tanneries, lumber-mills, paper-mills—even a newspaper. To-day the timber is gone, and so has the town except for your homes—twenty houses, perhaps. Your soil is sand and slate, fit only for a new forest; the entire country is useless for farming, and it is the natural home of pine and oak, of the deer and partridge."

He took one step nearer the silent circle around the stove. "I have offered to buy your rights; Grier hemmed you in on every side to force you out. I do not want to force you; I offer to buy your land at a fair appraisal. And your answer is to put a prohibitive price on the land."

"Because," observed old man Santry, "we've got you ketched. That's business, I guess."

Burleson flushed up. "Not business; blackmail, Santry."

Another silence, then a man laughed: "Is that what they call it down to York, Mr. Burleson?"

"I think so."

"When a man wants to put up a skyscraper an' gits all but the key-lot, an' if the owner of the key-lot holds out for his price, do they call it blackmail?"

"No," said Burleson; "I think I spoke hastily."

Not a sound broke the stillness in the store. After a moment old man Santry opened his clasp-knife, leaned forward, and shaved off a thin slice from the cheese on the counter. This he ate, faded eyes fixed on space. Men all around him relaxed in their chairs, spat, recrossed their muddy boots, stretching and yawning. Plainly the conference had ended.

"I am sorry," said young Burleson; "I had hoped for a fair understanding."

Nobody answered.

He tucked his riding-crop under one arm and stood watching them, buttoning his tan gloves. Then with the butt of his crop he rubbed a dry spot of mud from his leather puttees, freed the incrusted spurs, and turned towards the door, pausing there to look back.

"I hate to leave it this way," he said, impulsively. "I want to live in peace with my neighbors. I mean to make no threats—but neither can I be moved by threats.... Perhaps time will aid us to come to a fair understanding; perhaps a better knowledge of one another. Although the shooting and fishing are restricted, my house is always open to my neighbors. You will be welcome when you come—"

The silence was profound as he hesitated, standing there before them in the sunshine of the doorway—a lean, well-built, faultless figure, an unconscious challenge to poverty, a terrible offence to their every instinct—the living embodiment of all that they hated most in all the world.

And so he went away with a brief "Good-morning," swung himself astride his horse, and cantered off, gathering bridle as he rode, sweeping at a gallop across the wooden bridge into the forest world beyond.

The September woods were dry—dry enough to catch fire. His troubled eyes swept the second growth as he drew bridle at a gate set in a fence eight feet high and entirely constructed of wire net interwoven with barbed wire, and heavily hedged with locust and buck-thorn.

He dismounted, unlocked the iron gate, led his horse through, refastened the gate, and walked on, his horse following as a trained dog follows at heel.

Through the still September sunshine ripened leaves drifted down through interlaced branches, and the whispering rustle of their fall filled the forest silence. The wood road, carpeted with brilliant leaves, wound through second growth, following the edge of a dark, swift stream, then swept westward among the pines, where the cushion of brown needles deadened every step, and where there was no sound save the rustle of a flock of rose-tinted birds half buried in the feathery fronds of a white pine. Again the road curved eastward; skirting a cleft of slate rocks, through which the stream rushed with the sound of a wind-stirred woodland; and by this stream a man stood, loading a rusty fowling-piece.

Young Burleson had retained Grier's keepers, for obvious reasons; and already he knew them all by name. But this man was no keeper of his; and he walked straight up to him, bidding him a rather sharp good-morning, which was sullenly returned.

Then Burleson told him as pleasantly as he could that the land was preserved, that he could not tolerate armed trespassing, and that the keepers were charged to enforce the laws.

"It is better," he said, "to have a clear understanding at once. I think the law governing private property is clearly set forth on the signs along my boundary. This preserve is posted and patrolled; I have done all I could to guarantee public rights; I have not made any application to have the public road closed, and I am perfectly willing to keep it open for public convenience. But it is not right for anybody to carry a gun in these preserves; and if it continues I shall surely apply for permission to close the road."

"I guess you think you'll do a lot o' things," observed the man, stolidly.

"I think I will," returned Burleson, refusing to take offence at the insolence.

The man tossed his gun to his shoulder and slouched towards the boundary. Burleson watched him in silence until the fellow reached the netted wire fence, then he called out.

"There is a turnstile to the left."

But the native deliberately drew a hatchet from his belt, opened the wire netting with one heavy slash, and crawled through. Then wheeling in his tracks outside, he cursed Burleson and shook his gun at him, and finally slouched off towards Fox Cross-roads, leaving the master of the forest a trifle white and quivering under the cutting curb of self-control.

Presently his spasmodic grip on the riding-crop relaxed; he looked about him with a long, quiet breath, flicked a burr from his riding-breeches, and walked on, head lowered and jaw set. His horse followed at his heels.

A mile beyond he met a keeper demolishing a deadfall along the creek, and he summoned him with a good-humored greeting.

"Rolfe, we're headed for trouble, but it must not come—do you hear? I won't have it if it can be avoided—and it must be avoided. These poor devils that Grier hemmed in and warned off with his shot-gun patrol are looking for that same sort of thing from me. Petty annoyance shall not drive me into violence; I've made it plain to every keeper, every forester, every man who takes wages from me. If I can stand insolence from people I am sorry for, my employes can and must.... Who was that man I met below here?"

"Abe Storm, sir."

"What was he doing—building deadfalls?"

"Seven, sir. He had three muskrats, a mink, and a string of steel traps when I caught him—"

"Rolfe, you go to Abe Storm and tell him I give him leave to take muskrat and mink along Spirit Creek, and that I'll allow him a quarter bounty on every unmarked pelt, and he may keep the pelts, too."

The keeper looked blankly at the master: "Why—why, Mr. Burleson, he's the dirtiest, meanest market hunter in the lot!"

"You do as I say, Rolfe," said the master, amiably.

"Yes, sir—but—"

"Did you deliver my note to the fire-warden?"

"Yes, sir. The old man's abed with miseries. He said he'd send his deputy at noon."

Burleson laid his gloved hand on his horse's saddle, looking sharply at the keeper.

"They tell me that Mr. Elliott has seen better fortune, Rolfe."

"Yes, sir. When the Cross-roads went to pot, he went too. He owned a piece o' land that was no good only for the timber. He's like the rest o' them, I guess—only he had more to lose—an' he lost it same as all o' them."

Burleson drew out his watch, glanced at it, and then mounted.

"Try to make a friend of Abe Storm," he said; "that is my policy, and you all know it. Help me to keep the peace, Rolfe. If I keep it, I don't see how they're going to break it."

"Very well, sir. But it riles me to—"

"Nonsense! Now tell me where I'm to meet the fire-warden's deputy. Oh! then I'll jump him somewhere before long. And remember, Rolfe, that it's no more pleasure for me to keep my temper than it is for anybody. But I've got to do it, and so have you. And, after all, it's more fun to keep it than to let it loose."

"Yes, sir," said Rolfe, grinning like a dusty fox in July.

So Burleson rode on at a canter, presently slacking to a walk, arguing with himself in a low, calm voice:

"Poor devils—poor, half-starved devils! If I could afford to pay their prices I'd do it.... I'll wink at anything short of destruction; I can't let them cut the pine; I can't let them clean out the grouse and deer and fish. As for law-suits, I simply won't! There must be some decent way short of a shot-gun."

He stretched out a hand and broke a flaming maple leaf from a branch in passing, drew it through his button-hole, thoughtful eyes searching the road ahead, which now ran out through long strips of swale bordered by saplings.

Presently a little breeze stirred the foliage of the white birches to a sea of tremulous gold; and at the same moment a rider appeared in the marsh beyond, galloping through the blanched swale-grass, which rose high as the horse's girth.

Young Burleson drew bridle; the slim youth who sat his saddle so easily must be the deputy of the sick fire-warden; this was the time and the place.

As the young rider galloped up, Burleson leaned forward, offering his hand with an easy, pleasant greeting. The hand was unnoticed, the greeting breathlessly returned; two grave, gray eyes met his, and Burleson found himself looking into the flushed face of a young girl.

When he realized this, he took off his cap, and she inclined her head, barely acknowledging his salute.

"I am Mr. Elliott's daughter," she said; "you are Mr. Burleson?"

Burleson had the honor of presenting himself, cap in hand.

"I am my father's deputy," said the girl, quietly, gathering her bridle and wheeling her horse. "I read your note. Have you reason to believe that an attempt has been made to fire the Owl Vlaie?"

There was a ring of business in her voice that struck him as amusingly delightful—and such a sweet, clear voice, too, untinged with the slightest taint of native accent.

"Yes," said Burleson, gravely, "I'm afraid that somebody tried to burn the vlaie. I think that a change in the wind alone saved us from a bad fire."

"Shall we ride over?" inquired the girl, moving forward with unconscious grace.

Burleson ranged his big horse alongside; she set her mount at a gallop, and away they went, wheeling into the swale, knee-deep in dry, silvery grasses, until the deputy fire-warden drew bridle with a side-flung caution: "Muskrats! Look out for a cropper!"

Now, at a walk, the horses moved forward side by side through the pale, glistening sea of grass stretching out on every side.

Over a hidden pond a huge heron stood guard, stiff and shapeless as a weather-beaten stake. Blackbirds with crimson-slashed shoulders rose in clouds from the reeds, only to settle again as they passed amid a ceaseless chorus of harsh protest. Once a pair of summer duck came speeding overhead, and Burleson, looking up, exclaimed:

"There's a bird I never shoot at. It's too beautiful."

The girl turned her head, serious gray eyes questioning his.

"Have you ever seen a wood-duck?—a drake? in full plumage?" he asked.

"Often—before Mr. Grier came."

Burleson fell silent, restless in his saddle, then said:

"I hope you will see many wood-duck now. My boats on Spirit Water are always at Mr. Elliott's disposal—and at yours."

She made the slightest sign of acknowledgment, but said nothing. Once or twice she rose upright, standing straight in her stirrups to scan the distance under a small, inverted hand. East and north the pine forest girdled the vlaie; west and south hardwood timber laced the sky-line with branches partly naked, and the pine's outposts of white birch and willow glimmered like mounds of crumpled gold along the edges of the sea of grass.

"There is the stream!" said Burleson, suddenly.



She saw it at the same moment, touched her mare with spurred heels, and lifted her clean over with a grace that set Burleson's nerves thrilling.

He followed, taking the water-jump without effort; and after a second's hesitation ventured to praise her horse.

"Yes," she said, indifferently, "The Witch is a good mare." After a silence, "My father desires to sell her."

"I know a dozen men who would jump at the chance," said the young fellow. "But"—he hesitated—"it is a shame to sell such a mare—"

The girl colored. "My father will never ride again," she said, quietly. "We should be very glad to sell her."

"But—the mare suits you so perfectly—"

She turned her head and looked at him gravely. "You must be aware, Mr. Burleson, that it is not choice with us," she said. There was nothing of bitterness in her voice; she leaned forward, patting the mare's chestnut neck for a moment, then swung back, sitting straight as a cavalryman in her saddle. "Of course," she said, smiling for the first time, "it will break my heart to sell The Witch, but"—she patted the mare again—"the mare won't grieve; it takes a dog to do that; but horses—well, I know horses enough to know that even The Witch won't grieve."

"That is a radical theory, Miss Elliott," said Burleson, amused. "What about the Arab and his loving steed?"

"That is not a legend for people who know horses," she replied, still smiling. "The love is all on our side. You know horses, Mr. Burleson. Is it not the truth—the naked truth, stripped of poetry and freed from tradition?"

"Why strip poetry from anything?" he asked, laughing.

She rode on in silence for a while, the bright smile fading from lips and eyes.

"Oh, you are quite right," she said; "let us leave what romance there may be in the world. My horse loves me like a dog. I am very happy to believe it, Mr. Burleson."

From the luminous shadow of her sombrero she looked out across the stretch of marsh, where from unseen pools the wild-duck were rising, disturbed by the sound of their approach. And now the snipe began to dart skyward from under their horses' feet, filling the noon silence with their harsh "squak! squak!"

"It's along here somewhere," said Burleson, leaning forward in his saddle to scan the swale-grass. A moment later he said, "Look there, Miss Elliott!"

In the tall, blanched grasses a velvety black space marked the ashes of a fire, which had burned in a semi-circle, then westward to the water's edge.

"You see," he said, "it was started to sweep the vlaie to the pine timber. The wind changed, and held it until the fire was quenched at the shore."

"I see," she said.

He touched his horse, and they pressed forward along the bog's edge.

"Here," he pointed out, "they fired the grass again, you see, always counting on the west wind; and here again, and yonder too, and beyond that, Miss Elliott—in a dozen places they set the grass afire. If that wet east wind had not come up, nothing on earth could have saved a thousand acres of white pine—and I'm afraid to say how many deer and partridges and woodcock.... It was a savage bit of business, was it not, Miss Elliott?"

She sat her horse, silent, motionless, pretty head bent, studying the course of the fire in the swale. There was no mistaking the signs; a grass fire had been started, which, had the west wind held, must have become a brush fire, and then the most dreaded scourge of the north, a full-fledged forest-fire in tall timber. After a little while she raised her head and looked full at Burleson, then, without comment, she wheeled her mare eastward across the vlaie towards the pines.

"What do you make of it?" he asked, pushing his horse forward alongside of her mare.

"The signs are perfectly plain," she said. "Whom do you suspect?"

He waited a moment, then shook his head.

"You suspect nobody?"

"I haven't been here long enough. I don't exactly know what to do about this. It is comparatively easy to settle cases of simple trespass or deer-shooting, but, to tell the truth, Miss Elliott, fire scares me. I don't know how to meet this sort of thing."

She was silent.

"So," he added, "I sent for the fire-warden. I don't know just what the warden's duties may be."

"I do," she said, quietly. Her mare struck solid ground; she sent her forward at a gallop, which broke into a dead run. Burleson came pounding along behind, amused, interested at this new caprice. She drew bridle at the edge of the birches, half turned in her saddle, bidding him follow with a gesture, and rode straight into the covert, now bending to avoid branches, now pushing intrusive limbs aside with both gloved hands.

Out of the low bush pines, heirs of the white birches' heritage, rabbits hopped away; sometimes a cock grouse, running like a rat, fled, crested head erect; twice twittering woodcock whirred upward, beating wings tangled for a moment in the birches, fluttering like great moths caught in a net.

And now they had waded through the silver-birches which fringed the pines as foam fringes a green sea; and before them towered the tall timber, illuminated by the sun.

In the transparent green shadows they drew bridle; she leaned forward, clearing the thick tendrils of hair from her forehead, and sat stock-still, intent, every exquisite line and contour in full relief against the pines.

At first he thought she was listening, nerves keyed to sense sounds inaudible to him. Then, as he sat, fascinated, scarcely breathing lest the enchantment break, leaving him alone in the forest with the memory of a dream, a faint aromatic odor seemed to grow in the air; not the close scent of the pines, but something less subtle.

"Smoke!" he said, aloud.

She touched her mare forward, riding into the wind, delicate nostrils dilated; and he followed over the soundless cushion of brown needles, down aisles flanked by pillared pines whose crests swam in the upper breezes, filling all the forest with harmony.

And here, deep in the splendid forest, there was fire,—at first nothing but a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles; then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path from which fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanishing in the woodland half-light.

He sprang from his horse and tore away a bed of green moss through which filaments of blue smoke stole; and deep in the forest mould, spreading like veins in an autumn leaf, fire ran underground, its almost invisible vapor curling up through lichens and the brown carpet of pine-needles.

At first, for it was so feeble a fire, scarcely alive, he strove to stamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed its wormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals rising through living moss—everywhere the attenuated spirals creeping from the ground underfoot.

"I could summon every man in this town if necessary," she said; "I am empowered by law to do so; but—I shall not—yet. Where could we find a keeper—the nearest patrol?"

"Please follow me," he said, mounting his horse and wheeling eastward.

In a few moments they came to a foot-trail, and turned into it at a canter, skirting the Spirit Water, which stretched away between two mountains glittering in the sun.

"How many men can you get?" she called forward.

"I don't know; there's a gang of men terracing below the lodge—"

"Call them all; let every man bring a pick and shovel. There is a guard now!"

Burleson pulled up short and shouted, "Murphy!"

The patrol turned around.

"Get the men who are terracing the lodge. Bring picks, shovels, and axes, and meet me here. Run for it!"

The fire-warden's horse walked up leisurely; the girl had relinquished the bridle and was guiding the mare with the slightest pressure of knee and heel. She sat at ease, head lowered, absently retying the ribbon on the hair at her neck. When it was adjusted to her satisfaction she passed a hat-pin through her sombrero, touched the bright, thick hair above her forehead, straightened out, stretching her legs in the stirrups. Then she drew off her right gauntlet, and very discreetly stifled the daintiest of yawns.

"You evidently don't believe there is much danger," said Burleson, with a smile which seemed to relieve the tension he had labored under.

"Yes, there is danger," she said.

After a silence she added, "I think I hear your men coming."

He listened in vain; he heard the wind above filtering through the pines; he heard the breathing of their horses, and his own heart-beats, too. Then very far away a sound broke out.

"What wonderful ears you have!" he said—not thinking of their beauty until his eye fell on their lovely contour. And as he gazed the little, clean-cut ear next to him turned pink, and its owner touched her mare forward—apparently in aimless caprice, for she circled and came straight back, meeting his gaze with her pure, fearless gray eyes.

There must have been something not only perfectly inoffensive, but also well-bred, in Burleson's lean, bronzed face, for her own face softened into an amiable expression, and she wheeled the mare up beside his mount, confidently exposing the small ear again.

The men were coming; there could be no mistake this time. And there came Murphy, too, and Rolfe, with his great, swinging stride, gun on one shoulder, a bundle of axes on the other.

"This way," said Burleson, briefly; but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig of aromatic black birch, as she rode, to place between her red lips.

Murphy, arriving in the lead, scanned the haze which hung along the living moss.

"Sure, it's a foolish fire, sorr," he muttered, "burrowing like a mole gone mad. Rest aisy, Misther Burleson; we'll scotch the divil that done this night's worruk!—bad cess to the dhirrty scut!"

"Never mind that, Murphy. Miss Elliott, are they to dig it out?"

She nodded.

The men, ranged in an uneven line, stood stupidly staring at the long vistas of haze. The slim fire-warden wheeled her mare to face them, speaking very quietly, explaining how deep to dig, how far a margin might be left in safety, how many men were to begin there, and at what distances apart.

Then she picked ten men and bade them follow her.

Burleson rode in the rear, motioning Rolfe to his stirrup.

"What do you think of it?" he asked, in a low voice.

"I think, sir, that one of those damned Storms did it—"

"I mean, what do you think about the chances? Is it serious?"

"That young lady ahead knows better than I do. I've seen two of these here underground fires: one was easy killed; the other cleaned out three thousand acres."

Burleson nodded. "I think," he said, "that you had better go back to the lodge and get every spare man. Tell Rudolf to rig up a wagon and bring rations and water for the men. Put in something nice for Miss Elliott—see to that, Rolfe; do you hear?"

"Yes, sir."

"And, Rolfe, bring feed for the horses—and see that there are a couple of men to watch the house and stables—" He broke out, bitterly, "It's a scoundrelly bit of work they've done!—" and instantly had himself under control again. "Better go at once, Rolfe, and caution the men to remain quiet under provocation if any trespassers come inside."

II

By afternoon they had not found the end of the underground fire. The live trail had been followed and the creeping terror exterminated for half a mile; yet, although two ditches had been dug to cut the fire off from farther progress, always ahead the haze hung motionless, stretching away westward through the pines.

Now a third trench was started—far enough forward this time, for there was no blue haze visible beyond the young hemlock growth.

The sweating men, stripped to their undershirts, swung pick and axe and drove home their heavy shovels. Burleson, his gray flannel shirt open at the throat, arms bared to the shoulder, worked steadily among his men; on a knoll above, the fire-warden sat cross-legged on the pine-needles, her straight young back against a tree. On her knees were a plate and a napkin. She ate bits of cold partridge at intervals; at intervals she sipped a glass of claret and regarded Burleson dreamily.

To make certain, she had set a gang of men to clear the woods in a belt behind the third ditch; a young growth of hemlock was being sacrificed, and the forest rang with axe-strokes, the cries of men, the splintering crash of the trees.

"I think," said Burleson to Rolfe, who had just come up, "that we are ahead of the trouble now. Did you give my peaceful message to Abe Storm?"

"No, sir; he wasn't to home—damn him!"

The young man looked up quickly. "What's the trouble now?" he asked.

"There's plenty more trouble ahead," said the keeper, in a low voice. "Look at this belt, sir!" and he drew from his pocket a leather belt, unrolled it, and pointed at a name scratched on the buckle. The name was "Abe Storm."

"Where did that come from?" demanded Burleson.

"The man that fired the vlaie grass dropped it. Barry picked it up on patrol. There's the evidence, sir. The belt lay on the edge of the burning grass."

"You mean he dropped it last night, and Barry found it where the grass had been afire?"

"No, sir; that belt was dropped two hours since. The grass was afire again."

The color left Burleson's face, then came surging back through the tightening skin of the set jaws.

"Barry put out the blaze, sir. He's on duty there now with Chase and Connor. God help Abe Storm if they get him over the sights, Mr. Burleson."

Burleson's self-command was shaken. He reached out his hand for the belt, flung away his axe, and walked up the slope of the knoll where the fire-warden sat calmly watching him.

For a few moments he stood before her, teeth set, in silent battle with that devil's own temper which had never been killed in him, which he knew now could never be ripped out and exterminated, which must, must lie chained—chained while he himself stood tireless guard, knowing that chains may break.

After a while he dropped to the ground beside her, like a man dead tired. "Tell me about these people," he said.

"What people, Mr. Burleson? My own?"

Her sensitive instinct had followed the little drama from her vantage-seat on the knoll; she had seen the patrol display the belt; she had watched the color die out and then flood the young man's face and neck; and she had read the surface signs of the murderous fury that altered his own visage to a mask set with a pair of blazing eyes. And suddenly, as he dropped to the ground beside her, his question had swept aside formality, leaving them on the very edge of an intimacy which she had accepted, unconsciously, with her low-voiced answer.

"Yes—your own people. Tell what I should know I want to live in peace among them if they'll let me."

She gathered her knees in her clasped fingers and looked out into the forest. "Mr. Burleson," she said, "for every mental, every moral deformity, man is answerable to man. You dwellers in the pleasant places of the world are pitiless in your judgment of the sullen, suspicious, narrow life you find edging forests, clinging to mountain flanks, or stupidly stifling in the heart of some vast plain. I cannot understand the mental cruelty which condemns with contempt human creatures who have had no chance—not one single chance. Are they ignorant? Then bear with them for shame! Are they envious, grasping, narrow? Do they gossip about neighbors, do they slander without mercy? What can you expect from starved minds, human intellects unnourished by all that you find so wholesome? Man's progress only inspires man; man's mind alone stimulates man's mind. Where civilization is, there are many men; where is the greatest culture, the broadest thought, the sweetest toleration, there men are many, teaching one another unconsciously, consciously, always advancing, always uplifting, spite of the shallow tide of sin which flows in the footsteps of all progress—"

She ceased; her delicate, earnest face relaxed, and a smile glimmered for a moment in her eyes, in the pretty curled corners of her parted lips.

"I'm talking very like a school-marm," she said. "I am one, by-the-way, and I teach the children of these people—my people," she added, with an exquisite hint of defiance in her smile.

She rested her weight on one arm and leaned towards him a trifle.

"In Fox Cross-roads there is much that is hopeless, much that is sorrowful, Mr. Burleson; there is hunger, bodily hunger; there is sickness unsolaced by spiritual or bodily comfort—not even the comfort of death! Ah, you should see them—once! Once would be enough! And no physician, nobody that knows, I tell you—nobody through the long, dusty, stifling summers—nobody through the lengthening bitterness of the black winters—nobody except myself. Mr. Burleson, old man Storm died craving a taste of broth; and Abe Storm trapped a partridge for him, and Rolfe caught him and Grier jailed him—and confiscated the miserable, half-plucked bird!"

The hand which supported her weight was clinched; she was not looking at the man beside her, but his eyes never left hers.

"You talk angrily of market hunting, and the law forbids it. You say you can respect a poacher who shoots for the love of it, but you have only contempt for the market hunter. And you are right sometimes—" She looked him in the eyes. "Old Santry's little girl is bedridden. Santry shot and sold a deer—and bought his child a patent bed. She sleeps almost a whole hour now without much pain."

Burleson, eyes fixed on her, did not stir. The fire-warden leaned forward, picked up the belt, and read the name scratched with a hunting-knife on the brass buckle.

"Before Grier came," she said, thoughtfully, "there was misery enough here—cold, hunger, disease—oh, plenty of disease always. Their starved lands of sand and rock gave them a little return for heart-breaking labor, but not enough. Their rifles helped them to keep alive; timber was free; they existed. Then suddenly forest, game, vlaie, and lake were taken from them—fenced off, closed to these people whose fathers' fathers had established free thoroughfare where posted warnings and shot-gun patrols now block every trodden trail! What is the sure result?—and Grier was brutal! What could be expected? Why, Mr. Burleson, these people are Americans!—dwarfed mentally, stunted morally, year by year reverting to primal type—yet the fire in their blood set their grandfathers marching on Saratoga!—marching to accomplish the destruction of all kings! And Grier drove down here with a coachman and footman in livery and furs, and summoned the constable from Brier Bridge, and arrested old man Santry at his child's bedside—the new bed paid for with Grier's buck...."

She paused; then, with a long breath, she straightened up and leaned back once more against the tree.

"They are not born criminals," she said. "See what you can do with them—see what you can do for them, Mr. Burleson. The relative values of a deer and a man have changed since they hanged poachers in England."

They sat silent for a while, watching the men below.

"Miss Elliott," he said, impulsively, "may I not know your father?"

She flushed and turned towards him as though unpleasantly startled. That was only instinct, for almost at the same moment she leaned back quietly against the tree.

"I think my father would like to know you," she said. "He seldom sees men—men like himself."

"Perhaps you would let me smoke a cigarette, Miss Elliott?" he ventured.

"You were very silly not to ask me before," she said, unconsciously falling into his commonplace vein of easy deference.

"I wonder," he went on, lazily, "what that debris is on the land which runs back from the store at Fox Cross-roads. It can't be that anybody was simple enough to go boring for oil."

She winced; but the smile remained on her face, and she met his eyes quite calmly.

"That pile of debris," she said, "is, I fancy, the wreck of the house of Elliott. My father did bore for oil and found it—about a pint, I believe."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," cried Burleson, red as a pippin.

"I am not a bit sensitive," she said. Her mouth, the white, heavy lids of her eyes, contradicted her.

"There was a very dreadful smash-up of the house of Elliott, Mr. Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will advise me how I may sell 'The Witch.' I don't mind telling you why. My father has simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped—be made bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I were in a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know of any people who care for that sort of horse, I'll be delighted to enter into brisk correspondence with them."