y spot at the edge of the meadow he pointed out a bear
wallow, and farther on a deer lick. "It's a sulphur spring," he
exclaimed, "and deer come from miles around to drink there."

"Do you shoot them?" she asked.

"We always have fresh meat when we need. Ben Crider says he won't let a
deer come up and bite him without trying to defend himself."

"It's like murder, isn't it?"

"Well, I never murdered anyone myself, but I hit the first deer I ever
shot at, and I felt as if I'd lain in wait at a street corner and killed
a schoolboy on his way home. But I missed the next three or four, and
that made me blood-thirsty. I guess if you carried that feeling back far
enough a man could go out and shoot his little sister if he'd had to
still-hunt her over rough ground all day, and especially if he'd missed
two or three cousins or an uncle in the meantime. I think that would
raise the savage in him enough."

They were skirting the lake now, a glinting oval of sapphire in its
setting of granite. Beyond this they rode through the thinned
timber--where Cooney was dissuaded, not without effort, from pursuing
his ancient charge, and emerged into the glare of the clearing.

As they dismounted at the door of the cabin a melancholy of minor chords
from a guitar came to their ears, and a voice, nasal, but vibrant with
emotion, sang the final couplet of what had too plainly been a ballad of
pathos:

"While they were honeymooning in a mansion on the hill,
Kind friends were laying Nellie out behind the mill."

"That's one of Ben's best songs," said Ewing, with so genuine a gravity
that he stifled quite another emotion in the lady as she caught his
look.

"Indeed! I must hear him sing more," she managed with some difficulty.

The sorrowful one arose as they entered, hastily thrusting aside his
guitar as might an assassin have cast away his weapon. His face was
shaven to a bitter degree; in spots it was scarified. But the drooping
lines of woe unutterable were still there in opposition to his Sabbath
finery--a spreading blue-satin cravat, lighted by a stone of impressive
bulk, elegant black trousers, and suspenders of red silk embroidered
with pansies and a running vine of green. He greeted the visitor as one
who would say, "Yes, it's a sad affair--wholly unexpected," and, cocking
an eye of long-suffering negation on Ewing, he went out to the horses.

As they entered the studio Mrs. Laithe saw that the easel had been
wheele