t Phenie. But Ford had looked so threateningly at her and Buddy
that she could not bring herself to attract his attention to the child
or herself. Phenie had plenty of spirit; she could run down to the
bunk-house--Mrs. Kate heard a door slam then, and shuddered. Phenie, she
judged swiftly, had locked herself into the pantry.

Phenie had. Or, to be exact, she had run in and slammed the door shut
in Ford's very face, and she was leaning her weight against it. Mrs.
Kate, pressing the struggling Buddy closer to her, heard voices, a
slight commotion, and then silence. She could bear no more. She threw a
shawl over her head, grasped Buddy firmly by the arm, and fled in terror
to the bunk-house.

The voices were a brief altercation between Ford and Josephine, on the
subject of opening the door, before it was removed violently from its
hinges. The commotion was when Josephine, between tears and laughter,
failed to hold the door against the pressure of a strong man upon the
other side, and, suddenly giving over the attempt, was launched against
a shelf and dislodged three tin pans, which she barely saved from
falling with a great clatter to the floor. The silence--the silence
should explain itself; but since humanity is afflicted with curiosity,
and demands details, this is what occurred immediately after Josephine
had been kissed four times for her stubbornness, and the pans had been
restored to their proper place.

"Say! Are you my wife?" was the abrupt question which Ford asked, and
kissed her again while he waited for an answer.

"Why, yes--what makes you ask that? Of course I am; that is--" Josephine
twisted in his arms, so that she could look into his face. She did not
laugh at him, however. She was staring at him with that keen, measuring
look which had so incensed him, when he had first met her. "I don't
understand you at all, Ford," she said at last, with a frown of
puzzlement. "I never have, for that matter. I'd think I was beginning
to, and then you would say or do something that would put me all at sea.
What do you mean, anyway?"

Ford told her what he meant; told her humbly, truthfully, with never an
excuse for himself. And it speaks well for the good sense of Josephine
that she heard him through with neither tears, laughter, nor anger to
mar his trust in her.

"Of course, I knew you had been drinking, that night," she said, when
his story was done, and his face was pressed lightly against the white
parting i