ing alone?" he asked.

"How could she be fond of walking when there's no place to walk?" Bates
spoke roughly. "Besides, she has too much work to do."

"Ever lost her before?"

"No," said Bates. It would have been perfectly unbearable to his pride
that these strangers should guess his real uneasiness or its cause, so
he talked as if the fact of the girl's long absence was not in any way
remarkable.

Having mixed a batter the American sliced pork fat into the hot pan and
was instantly obscured from view by the smoke thereof. In a minute his
face appeared above it like the face of a genius.

"You will observe, gentlemen," he cried without bashfulness, "that I now
perform the eminently interesting operation of dropping cakes--one, two,
three. May the intelligent young lady return to eat them!"

No one laughed, but his companions smiled patiently at his antics--a
patience born of sitting in a very hot, steamy room after weeks in the
open air.

"You are a cook," remarked Bates.

The youth bent his long body towards him at a sudden angle. "Born a
cook--dentist by profession--by choice a vagabond."

"Dentist?" said Bates curiously.

"At your service, sir."

"He is really a dentist," said one of the surveyors with sleepy
amusement. "He carries his forceps round in his vest pocket."

"I lost them when I scrambled head first down this gentleman's
macadamised road this morning, but if you want a tooth out I can use the
tongs."

"My teeth are all sound," said Bates.

"Thank the Lord for that!" the young man answered with an emphatic piety
which, for all that appeared, might have been perfectly sincere.

"And the young lady?" he asked after a minute.

"What?"

"The young lady's teeth--the teeth of the intelligent young lady--the
intelligent teeth of the young lady--are they sound?"

"Yes."

He sighed deeply. "And to think," he mourned, "that he should have
casually lost her _just_ this morning!"

He spoke exactly as if the girl were a penknife or a marble that had
rolled from Bates's pocket, and the latter, irritated by an inward fear,
grew to hate the jester.

When the meal, which consisted of fried eggs, pancakes, and potatoes,
was eaten, the surveyors spent an hour or two about the clearing,
examining the nature of the soil and rock. They had something to say to
Bates concerning the value of his land which interested him exceedingly.
Considering how rare it was for him to see any one, and how fitted h