an the allowed nine points at that. So Dennis
Kavanagh had played the game as the others had played it. When one
looked up at the house, with its back against the woods, staring with
its surly window-eyes, one saw the resoluteness of the intrenched
Kavanagh put into visible form.

The dogs came racing to meet Harlan. They knew him as their mistress's
friend.

She was sitting on the broad porch-rail when he rode up, and he swung
his horse close and patted her cheek as one greets a child. She smiled
wistfully at him.

"Am I impudent, and all the things your grandfather said? I've been
thinking it all over, Big Boy, as I was riding home."

"You're only a little girl, and he talked to you as he'd talk to one of
our lumber-jacks," he burst out, angrily. "It was shameful, Clare. I
never saw my grandfather as he was to-day. He has used me just as
shamefully."

"I suppose I haven't had the bringing up a girl ought to have," she
confessed. "I haven't thought much about it before. There was nothing
ever happened to make me think about it. I was just Dennis Kavanagh's
girl, without any mother to tell me better. I suppose it has been wrong
for me to ride about with you. But you didn't have any mother and I
didn't have any mother, and it--it sort of seemed to make us--I don't
know how to say it, Big Boy! But it seemed to make us related--just as
though I had a brother to keep me company. I suppose it has been wrong
when you look at it the way girls have to look at such things."

He gazed on her compassionately. A few ruthless words had broken the
spell of childhood.

There was shame in her eyes as she gazed up at him. He had seen the
flush of youth and joy in her cheeks before--he had seen the happy color
come and go as they had met and parted. But this hue that crept up over
cheeks and brow made pity grow in him.

"He said--but you know what he said! And it isn't true. You know it
isn't true. He shamed and insulted me because I'm a girl--and can't a
girl have a friend that's tender and good to her?"

"A girl can," he said, gravely, "because I'm that friend, Clare. Perhaps
my grandfather cannot understand. But I'll see that he does. We are to
have some very serious talk together, he and I. I'm here to tell you,
little girl, that I'm grateful because you sent that message into the
woods to me. I'm not going to allow myself to be made a fool of in any
such fashion; I'm not going to be sent to the legislature."

"Oh, I've