t out. "Why ain't you? I come after you."

"You didn't wait, did you?"

"Old Mis' Drake said you were goin' with Briggs."

"Did I tell you so?"

He weakened a little.

"N-no! But she said you'd been down talkin' it over an' Oliver'd gone to
ketch the colt. She offered me the spy-glass."

Isabel's lips had a little line of white about them. She looked full at
him now.

"Did you take it, Jim?"

"Take it? No!" he roared at her. "Do you think I'd do a thing like
that?"

They stood looking at each other, glance holding glance, their eyes
blazing. Suddenly he threw the rake as if he had been throwing down a
shield and held out his arms to her. Isabel walked into them, and while
they kissed, her father's straw hat slipped back over her shoulders, and
she laughed and never missed the fluffy headgear lying in her room
upstairs, waiting for Poole's Woods. Suddenly she remembered that they
were out in the broad sunlight, in sight of the road, and then she
bethought her that all the town had gone to Poole's Woods to leave them
the world alone to kiss in. She remembered, too, that old Mrs. Drake's
spy-glass might be trained on them at that moment.

"I don't care," she said, and laughed.

"Don't care for what?" asked her lover, his lips at her ear.

"For anything. There! let me go. Here's some more fire in the grass."

They stamped and raked quite soberly for a moment, and then Isabel began
to laugh again. She looked wild and beautiful in her fight with the
earth and her own heart. Jim laughed a little, too.

"What is it, Bell?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said, in the ecstasy of happiness. "I guess I like a
burnfire."

When it died still lower, they walked toward the house, hand in hand,
and sat there on the steps watching it.

"Well," said Bryant, smiling at her, "you want to go to Poole's Woods?"

Isabel smiled back.

"I guess so," she said. "We can be there by luncheon-time."

"All right. I'll go home an' harness up." Half-way down the path he
stopped and turned. "Say, Isabel!"

She answered from the porch on her way in to don the muslin dress.

"What is it?"

"You never told me what you were down there for."

"Where?"

"Down to Oliver's."

She shook her head and laughed.

"No, nor I sha'n't, either." His brows were coming together. "'Twas an
errand," she called to him. "It wa'n't mine, either. You got to know?"

Again they stood looking at each other, this time with a steady
challenge as