Part 12 (2/2)

Once while he was busy at his task he paused to revel in the colors that lay against hill and valley, and to drink in the splendid isolation of it all Below lay the bed of Black Bear Creek, silent and soht; beyond, away beyond, across the ard briold in the last rays of the sun; while the open slopes behind and all about wore a carpet of fragrant short-lived flowers, nodding as if towards sleep, and over all was the hush of the lonely hills A gust blehiff of the camp s beside the fire like soin at her altar rites, while the peculiar acrid out-door odor of burning spruce was like an incense in his nostrils

He filled his chest deeply and leaned on his axe, for he found hireat expectancy

”Your supper is getting cold,” she called to hihs where the smoke was least troublesome; he had chosen a spot that was sheltered by a lichen-covered ledge, and this loall behind, with the wickiup joining it, formed an enclosure that lent them a certain air of privacy They ate ravenously, and drank deep cupfuls of the unflavored tea By the tiht had fallen and the air was just cool enough to reeable Burrell heaped on more wood and stretched out beside her

”This day has been so wonderful,” said the girl, ”that I shall never go to sleep I can't bear to end it”

”But you ently; ”I am”

”Wait, let htly to try her muscles ”Yes, I am a very tired, but not the kind of tired that o to bed I want to talk, talk, talk, and not about ourselves either, but about sensibles Tell me about your people--your sister”

He had expected her to ask this, for the subject seemed to have an inexhaustible char as he cared to talk of his sister, in her wide,It always seehtful, he had noticed, so he had tried lately to avoid the topic, and to-night in particular he wanted to do so, for this was no time for melancholy He had not even allowed himself to think, as yet, and there were reasons why he did not wish her to do so; thought and realization and a readjustht, but this was the hour of illusion, and it an to tell her of other people and of his youth,deliberately to foster the merry humor in which they had been all day He told her of his father, the crotchety old soldier, whose absurd sense of duty and whose elaborate Southern courtesy had become a byword in the South He told her household tales that were prized like pieces of the Burrell plate, beautiful heirlooh-blooded houses; follohich there was ht as a boy in the Bay of Tripoli down to the cousin as at Annapolis; the while his listener hung upon his words hungrily, her mind so quick in pursuit of his that it spurred hireat, dark eyes half closed in silent laughter or onder, and in theht blended with the trust of a new-born virginal love

Without realizing it, the young man drifted further than he had intended, and further than he had ever allowed hio before, for in hilory in her forebears, the expression of which he had learned to repress, inasmuch as it was a Dixie-land conceit and had been misunderstood when he went North to the Acadeoted and feminine, this ierated appreciation of his family honor, but in this Southern youth it was ht irl remarked, with honest approval:

”What a fine you are Those people of yours have all been good men and women, haven't they?”

”Most of them,” he admitted, ”and I think the reason is that we've been soldiers The arood for a ht”

Then he began to laugh silently

”What is it?” she said, curiously

”Oh, nothing! I was just wondering what my strait-laced ancestors would say if they could see irl asked, in open-eyed wonder her question ”They did worse things in their time, from what I hear” He leaned forward to draw her to hi bad,” said Necia, holding hi”

”Of course not,” he assured her

”I areatest thing that has ever co it to the stars and cry it out to the whole world Don't you?”

”I hardly think we'd better advertise,” he said, dryly

”Why not?”

”Well, I shouldn't care to publish the tale of this excursion of ours, would you?”

”I don't see any reason against it I have often taken trips with Poleon, and been gone with him for days and days at a time”

”But you were not a woman then,” he said, softly

”No, not until to-day, that's true Dear, dear! How I did grow all of a sudden! And yet I'm just the same as I was yesterday, and I'll always be the sa tame I don't want to be coood”