the geese and hogs there. East of Poetical
she got back to the river. It was very still along the Di. She could
hear her own heart beating. Once it occurred to her that life would have
been much simpler if she had gone to Europe the past fall, as Miss Elsie
Gossamer had insisted upon her doing. Once she murmured, "It would be
all right if he would only tell me,--I can't do anything until he tells
me--what _can_ a woman do until he tells her!" On ahead of her she could
see a little shack perched up the bluff, and in front of the shack, on a
log that served for a bench, a man sat, making something out of
something. His hands were busy.

He got to his feet a little unsteadily as she came toward him. It seemed
to him that there was a blue veil across his eyes, but he winked it away
quickly enough, shook the ache out of his shoulders, put down the
shoe-string that he was making out of a squirrel's skin, and stood in
front of the shack waiting, with his hat in his hand. He had on a
mud-stained corduroy hunting suit and big buckskin leggings, and there
was a week's growth of beard on his face. He looked not unlike a highly
civilised bear, and he felt his looks. She did not seem to see him until
she was close upon him.

"Oh," she cried, "I was not expecting to find you here," and when that
sounded a little bald, added quickly, "I heard that you were sick and I
thought it likely that you were up in Canaan."

"Oh, no, I am not sick," he told her, hastening down to the trap, the
delicious excitement that possessed him well restrained, "and since you
have found me here, won't you get out and have some,--well, let me
see,--some coffee and bacon? And I can make a lovely corn-dodger. Also I
have some kind of good stuff in a can, though I can't get the can open.
Do please stop and dine." Steering, sick, gaunt, gay, mocking at
hardship, hope deferred and far-reaching disappointment, was at his
best. Her eyes slipped away from his as he pressed his invitation. Then
she laughed softly, with the little shake of her laughter when a notion
appealed to her happily.

"I'm going to accept," she said, "I'll cook things and you can eat
them."

"I'll make a sacred duty of my part," he promised gravely; he was
lifting her from the buggy; her hands were on his shoulders; for a
little delirious minute she was in his arms; he could not keep his hands
from closing about her sweet body lingeringly as he lifted her; her eyes
were looking into his,