on't have it! Don't!"

He instantly released her, and she shrunk away, brushing off the bosom
of her blouse as if he had left dust there. Her face was flushed and
frowning.

"Don't. You mustn't," she repeated, with heated reproof. "I don't
want you to."

David smiled a sheepish smile, looking foolish, and not knowing what to
say. At the sight of his crestfallen expression she averted her eyes,
sorry that she had hurt him but not sufficiently sorry to risk a
repetition of the unpleasant experience. He, too, turned his glance
from her, biting his lip to hide the insincerity of his smile,
irritated at her unmanageableness, and in his heart valuing her more
highly that she was so hard to win. Both were exceedingly conscious,
and with deepened color sat gazing in opposite directions like children
who have had a quarrel.

A step behind them broke upon their embarrassment, saving them from the
necessity of speech. Daddy John's voice came with it:

"Missy, do you know if the keg of whisky was moved? It ain't where I
put it."

She turned with a lightning quickness.

"Whisky! Who wants whisky?"

Daddy John looked uncomfortable.

"Well, the doctor's took sort of cold, got a shiver on him like the
ague, and he thought a nip o' whisky'd warm him up."

She jumped to her feet.

"There!" flinging out the word with the rage of a disregarded prophet,
"a chill! I knew it!"

In a moment all the self-engrossment of her bashfulness was gone. Her
mind had turned on another subject with such speed and completeness
that David's kiss and her anger might have taken place in another world
in a previous age. Her faculties leaped to the sudden call like a
liberated spring, and her orders burst on Daddy John:

"In the back of the wagon, under the corn meal. It was moved when we
crossed the Big Blue. Take out the extra blankets and the medicine
chest. That's in the front corner, near my clothes, under the seat. A
chill--out here in the wilderness!"

David turned to soothe her:

"Don't be worried. A chill's natural enough after such a wetting."

She shot a quick, hard glance at him, and he felt ignominiously
repulsed. In its preoccupation her face had no recognition of him, not
only as a lover but as a human being. Her eyes, under low-drawn brows,
stared for a second into his with the unseeing intentness of inward
thought. Her struggles to avoid his kiss were not half so chilling.
Further solacing words died o