efore her, with his face turned towards
the distant mountain. Suddenly he stopped and faced her. "You would have
given enough of your time to the highwayman, Miss Scott, as would have
enabled you to identify him for the police--and no more. Like your
brother, you would have been willing to sacrifice yourself for the
benefit of the laws of civilization and good order."

If a denial to this assertion could have been expressed without the
use of speech, it was certainly transparent in the face and eyes of the
young girl at that moment. If Falkner had been less self-conscious he
would have seen it plainly. But Kate only buried her face in her lifted
muff, slightly raised her pretty shoulders, and, dropping her tremulous
eyelids, walked on. "It seems a pity," she said, after a pause, "that
we cannot preserve our own miserable existence without taking something
from others--sometimes even a life!" He started. "And it's horrid to
have to remind you that you have yet to kill something for the invalid's
supper," she continued. "I saw a hare in the field yonder."

"You mean that jackass rabbit?" he said, abstractedly.

"What you please. It's a pity you didn't take your gun instead of your
rifle."

"I brought the rifle for protection."

"And a shot gun is only aggressive, I suppose?"

Falkner looked at her for a moment, and then, as the hare suddenly
started across the open a hundred yards away, brought the rifle to his
shoulder. A long interval--as it seemed to Kate--elapsed; the animal
appeared to be already safely out of range, when the rifle suddenly
cracked; the hare bounded in the air like a ball, and dropped
motionless. The girl looked at the marksman in undisguised admiration.
"Is it quite dead?" she said timidly.

"It never knew what struck it."

"It certainly looks less brutal than shooting it with a shot gun, as
John does, and then not killing it outright," said Kate. "I hate what is
called sport and sportsmen, but a rifle seems--"

"What?" said Falkner.

"More--gentlemanly."

She had raised her pretty head in the air, and, with her hand shading
her eyes, was looking around the clear ether, and said meditatively, "I
wonder--no matter."

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing."

"It is something," said Falkner, with an amused smile, reloading his
rifle.

"Well, you once promised me an eagle's feather for my hat. Isn't that
thing an eagle?"

"I am afraid it's only a hawk."

"Well, that will do. Shoot that!"