course with him,
and weighed every conversation that he remembered. There came to him
half a hundred trifling circumstances that seemed to substantiate his
distrust.

The lack of his accustomed exercise told on his health. He grew moody
and irritable, and daily the wish for revenge grew stronger.
Satisfaction was due him, and satisfaction he would have.

III

A Weak Man's Strength

It was three weeks later. Bud Yarebrough, going rabbit-hunting,
pondered, as he trudged along the road, upon the freaks of an April
that had come in with snow, and alternately had warmed and chilled the
swelling hopes of bud and blossom, until the end of the month showed
trees and shrubs but a trifle farther advanced than at its beginning.

"Jus' like M'lissy used to treat me!"

He made the comparison with a breath of relief that that time of
wretchedness and rapture was past.

He heard the sound of hoofs approaching from behind, and whistled to
heel his three scrawny hounds. When he made sure of the rider's
identity, he shifted his gun to his other shoulder, and pulled off his
remnant of felt in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak
to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature
permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no
means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red
hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the
corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay
road, as with its wearer's coloring.

"How is Melissa, Bud?"

Some of Sydney Carroll's friends thought her voice her greatest charm.

"And the baby? She's a dear baby! I think she looks like Melissa, don't
you?"

"She's tol'able--they's tol'able. Yes, Miss Sydney, they says so,"
replied the lad, whose condition as the father of a family seemed to
cast him into depths of bashfulness.

"It's a great responsibility for you, Bud. I hope you feel it. And I
hope that you won't let _this_ happen often."

Sydney gravely tapped her eye with her finger, while Bud stole a shamed
hand over his own visual organ, which was surrounded by the paling
glories of a recent contusion. The color mounted to his hair as he
stammered,--

"Hit wasn't that--that what you think, Miss Sydney. Hit was a stick o'
wood----" But his voice trailed off into nothingness before the girl's
gaze.

"Bud, I know--I heard how it happened. Don't tell me what isn't true."

Bud ki