cking,--and with a far-off, plaintive stare, achieved a colorable
imitation of her elder sister's probable attitude.) "Then you jest go up
softly, like as you was a bear, and clap your hands on her eyes, and
say in a disguised voice like this" (here Del turned on a high falsetto
beyond any masculine compass), "'Who's who?' jest like in forfeits."

"But she'll be sure to know me," said the surveyor timidly.

"She won't," said Del in scornful skepticism.

"I hardly think"--stammered the young man, with an awkward smile, "that
I--in fact--she'll discover me--before I can get beside her."

"Not if you go softly, for she'll be sittin' back to the road,
so--gazing away, so"--the youngest Miss Piper again stared dreamily in
the distance, "and you'll creep up just behind, like this."

"But won't she be angry? I haven't known her long--that is--don't you
see?" He stopped embarrassedly.

"Can't hear a word you say," said Del, shaking her head decisively.
"You've got my deaf ear. Speak louder, or come closer."

But here the instruction suddenly ended, once and for all time! For
whether the young man was seriously anxious to perfect himself; whether
he was truly grateful to the young girl and tried to show it; whether he
was emboldened by the childish appeal of the long brown distinguishing
braid down her back, or whether he suddenly found something peculiarly
provocative in the reddish brown eyes between their thickset hedge of
lashes, and with the trim figure and piquant pose, and was seized with
that hysteric desperation which sometimes attacks timidity itself, I
cannot say! Enough that he suddenly put his arm around her waist and
his lips to her soft satin cheek, peppered and salted as it was by
sun-freckles and mountain air, and received a sound box on the ear for
his pains. The incident was closed. He did not repeat the experiment on
either sister. The disclosure of his rebuff seemed, however, to give a
singular satisfaction to Red Gulch.

While it may be gathered from this that the youngest Miss Piper was
impervious to general masculine advances, it was not until later that
Red Gulch was thrown into skeptical astonishment by the rumors that all
this time she really had a lover! Allusion has been made to the charge
that her deafness did not prevent her from perfectly understanding the
ordinary tone of voice of a certain Mr. Thomas Sparrell.

No undue significance was attached to this fact through the very
insignifica