l.

Ann poured out his beer. Christa looked at him with eyes full of
reproach. Then she got up and went away to the doorstep, and stood
looking out. To the surprise of both of them, David did not follow her
there. He stood still near Ann.

"It's hard on Christa," said Ann with a sigh; "she has been crying all
day. Every one will desert us now, and we shall have to live alone
without friends."

"Oh no" (abruptly); "nobody blames you."

"I don't mind for myself so much; I don't care so much about what people
think, or how they treat me." She lifted her head proudly as she spoke.
"But" (with pathos) "it's hard on Christa."

"No; you never think of yourself, do you?" David giggled a little as he
said it, betraying that he felt his words to be unusually personal. Ann
wondered for a minute what could be the cause of this giggle, and then
she returned to the subject of Christa's suffering.

"Look here," he interrupted, "if there's any little thing I can do to
help you, like lending you money if you're left hard up, or anything of
that sort, you know" (he was blushing furiously now), "it's for you I'd
do it," he blurted out. "I don't care about Christa."

"The silly fellow!" thought Ann. She was six years older than he, and
she felt herself to be twenty years older. She entirely scorned his
admiration in its young folly; but she did not hesitate a moment to make
use of it. All her life had been a long training in that thrift which
utilised everything for family gain. She was a thorough woman of
society, this girl who sat in her backwoods cottage selling beer.

She looked at the boy, and a sudden glow of sensibility appeared in her
face. "Oh, David!" she said; "I thought it was Christa."

"But it isn't Christa," he stammered, grinning. He was hugely pleased
with the idea that she had accepted his declaration of courtship.

Half an hour later and Ann had the secret of the new track through the
north of the drowned forest, and Brown had the wit not to ask her what
she wanted to do with it. He had done more--he had offered to row her
boat for her, but this Ann had refused.

It was a curious thing, this refusal. It arose purely from principle on
her part; she had come to the limit which the average mind sets to the
evil it will commit. She deceived and cajoled the boy without scruple,
but she did not allow him to break the law. She remembered that he had
parents who valued his good name more than he had as yet learned to