r shoulder hurriedly, and there was Lot Gordon.

Lot came forward from a cluster of young firs, parting the rank
undergrowth with the careless wonted movement of one who steers his
way among his own household goods. Well used to all the wild disorder
of out-doors was Lot Gordon, and could have picked his way of a dark
night among the stones and bushes and trees of many a pasture and
woodland. Moreover, Lot, uprising from the great nest which he had
hollowed out for himself from a sweet fern growth under the balsam
firs, exhaling their fragrant breath of healing, and coming into
sight, made better show than he had ever done in his own book-walled
study.

Here, where the minds of other men swerved him and incited him not,
where only Nature herself held him in leading-strings with
unsearchable might or was laid bare before his daring eyes and many a
secret discovered, Lot Gordon gained his best grace of home. The
balsam firs framed him with more truth than the door of his own
dwelling. To Madelon, as he came out from them, he looked more a man
than he had ever done; for all unconsciously to her mind of strong
and simple bent, he had seemed at times scarce a man but rather some
strange character from a book, which had gotten life through too
strong imagining.

Moreover to-day his likeness to Burr came out strongly. Madelon saw
the cant of his head and swing of his shoulders, with a half sense of
shame that he was not Burr, and yet with a sudden understanding of
him that she had never felt before. She had not seen him since her
betrothal to Burr. She thought to herself that he was thinner, and
that the red flush on his cheeks was the flush of fever and not of
the summer sun.

"How do you do, Lot?" she said. Madelon's cheeks were a splendid red;
her green sunbonnet hung by its strings low on her neck, and her
head, with black hair clinging to her temples in moist rings, was
thrust out from the green tangle of vines like a flower. When Lot did
not answer at once, but stood pale and trembling, as if an icy wind
had struck him, before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from
her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still
Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient
dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but then Lot spoke.

"Like mankind," he said, "'tis not well, and it tends to death, but
we were born with a lash at our backs to do it."

Madelon knit her brows impatie