t you. Any day"--he spoke with a curious, half-savage
reluctance--"any day you'll say the word, I'll take you."

His eyes, like his voice, were resentful, yet eager. He took off his hat
and wiped the perspiration from his brow, looking away from her now,
toward the road by which they had climbed.

Johnnie regarded him through her thick eyelashes, the smile still
lingering bright in her eyes. After all, it was only a rather unusual
kind of sweethearting, and not a case of it to touch her feelings.

"I'm mighty sorry," she said soberly, "but I ain't aimin' to wed any
man, fixed like I am. Mother and the children have to be looked after,
and I can't ask a man to do for 'em, so I have it to do myself."

"Of course I can't take your mother and the children," Buckheath
objected querulously, as though she had asked him to do so. "But you
I'll take; and you'd do well to think it over. You won't get such a
chance soon again, and I'm apt to change my mind if you put on airs with
me this way."

Johnnie shook her head.

"I know it's a fine chance, Shade," she said in the kindest tone, "but
I'm hoping you will change your mind, and that soon; for it's just like
I tell you."

She turned with evident intention of going back and terminating their
interview. Buckheath stepped beside her in helpless fury. He knew she
would have other, opportunities, and better. He was aware how futile was
this threat of withdrawing his proposition. Hot, tired, angry, the dust
of the way prickling on his face and neck, he was persistently conscious
of a letter in the pocket of his striped shirt, over his heavily beating
heart, warm and moist like the shirt itself, with the sweat of his body.
Good Lord! That letter which had come from Washington this morning
informing him that the device this girl had invented was patentable,
filled her hands with gold. It was necessary that he should have control
of her, and at once. He put from him the knowledge of how her charm
wrought upon him--bound him the faster every time he spoke to her. Cold,
calculating, sluggishly selfish, he had not reckoned with her radiant
personality, nor had the instinct to know that, approached closely, it
must inevitably light in him unwelcome and inextinguishable fires.

"Johnnie," he said finally, "you ain't saying no to me, are you? You
take time to think it over--but not so very long--I'll name it to
you again."

"Please don't, Shade," remonstrated the girl, walking on fast