hen he had dried his
hands upon his handkerchief he cast aside his inward shyness in the
presence of the Hart boys and Miss Georgie and Baumberger, and went
boldly over to her.

"Aren't you feeling well?" he asked, with tender proprietorship in his
tone.

"I'm feeling quite well, thank you," returned Evadna frigidly,
neglecting to look at him.

"What is the matter, then? Aren't you having a good time?"

"I'm enjoying myself very much--except that your presence annoys me. I
wish you'd go away."

Good Indian turned on his heel and went; he felt that at last Evadna was
looking at him, though he would not turn to make sure. And his instinct
told him withal that he must ignore her mood if he would win her from
it. With a freakish impulse, he headed straight for the campfire and
Miss Georgie, but when he came up to her the look she gave him of
understanding, with sympathy to soften it, sent him away again without
speaking.

He wandered back to the river's edge--this time some distance from
where Evadna sat--and began throwing pebbles at the black nose of a
wave-washed bowlder away toward the other side. Clark and Gene, loitered
up, watched him lazily, and, picking up other pebbles, started to do
the same thing. Soon all the boys were throwing at the bowlder, and were
making a good deal of noise over the various hits and misses, and the
spirit of rivalry waxed stronger and stronger until it was like any
other game wherein full-blooded youths strive against one another for
supremacy. They came to the point of making bets, at first extravagant
and then growing more and more genuinely in earnest, for we're gamblers
all, at heart.

Miss Georgie burned a frying-panful of fish until they sent up an acrid,
blue smoke, while she ran over to try her luck with a stone or two. Even
Baumberger heaved himself up from where he was lounging, and strolled
over to watch. But Evadna could not have stuck closer to her rock if she
had been glued there, and if she had been blind and deaf she would not
have appeared more oblivious.

Good Indian grew anxious, and then angry. The savage stirred within
him, and counseled immediate and complete mastery of her--his woman.
But there was the white man of him who said the thought was brutal and
unchivalrous, and reminded the savage that one must not look upon a
woman as a chattel, to be beaten or caressed, as the humor seized the
master. And, last of all, there was the surface of him laughing wi