ad come in from his week's work,
ploughing or planting or teaming back in the timber and waited for
it to call to him, just at dusk, across the valley.

His hand went tentatively to his chin, absently caressing his lean
cheeks as he remembered that day. Late in the afternoon he had found a
rabbit caught fast in a snare which he had set deep in the thicket,
and the little animal had squealed in terror, just as rabbits always
squeal, when he leaned and took it from the trap. And when he had
straightened to his feet with it clutched fast in his arms, to look
for a club with which to end its struggles quickly, his eyes had
lifted to encounter the stormy eyes of the girl who had flashed up
before him as silently as a shadow from the empty air.

Her two small brown fists were tight clenched against her breast; she
was breathing in short irregular gasps as if she had been running
hard.

At first Denny Bolton had been too amazed to do more than stare
blankly into her blazing eyes; then before that burning glare his face
began to redden consciously and his gaze dropped, wavering from her
face to the little blouse so long outgrown that it strained far open
across the girl's round throat, doubly white by contrast below the
brown line where the clear tan ended.

His glance went down from the fierce little face to the tight skirt,
shiny from long wear and so short that the hem hung high above her
slim ankles; and from there down to the cracked, broken shoes,
string-laced and sized too large for her fine drawn feet. They were
old and patched--the stockings--so thickly darned that there was
little of the original fabric left, but for all the patches there were
still wide gashes in them, fresh torn by the thorns, through which the
flesh beneath showed very white.

Her face colored, too, as Young Denny's uncomfortable scrutiny passed
over her. It flamed painfully from throat to hair and then went very
white. She tried vainly with one hand to close the gap at her throat,
while the other struggled to settle the dingy old skirt a little lower
on her childish hips. But her hot eyes clung unwaveringly to the boy's
face. Suddenly she lifted one hand and pointed a quivering finger at
the furry mass palpitating in his arms.

"What are you going to do with it?" she demanded.

Young Denny started at the question. The uncompromising directness of
the words startled him even more than had her first swift, silent
coming. Involuntarily, spas