ng and
seductive.

"More than eighteen dollars an ounce, perhaps!" he exclaimed, with
sudden bitterness; but still he did not throw the handkerchief away.
Instead, he looked at it more keenly. In one corner, the fading light
just showed him some initials. He studied them, a moment.

"C. J. F." he read. Then, yielding to a sudden impulse, he
folded the kerchief and put it in his pocket.

He entered the sugar-house, to make sure, before departing, that he had
left no danger of fire behind him.

Another impulse bade him sit down on a rough box, there, before the
dying embers. He gazed at the bed of leaves, a while, immersed in
thought, then filled his pipe and lighted it with a glowing brand, and
sat there--while the night came--smoking and musing, in a reverie.

The overpowering lure of the woman who had lain in his arms, as he had
borne her thither; her breath upon his face; the perfume of her, even
her blood that he had washed away--all these were working on his senses,
still. But most of all he seemed to see her eyes, there in the
ember-lit gloom, and hear her voice, and feel her lithe young body and
her breast against his breast.

For a long time he sat there, thinking, dreaming, smoking, till the last
shred of tobacco was burned out in the heel of his briar; till the last
ember had winked and died under the old sheet-iron stove.

At last, with a peculiar laugh, he rose, slung the knapsack once more on
his shoulders, settled his cap upon his head, and made ready to depart.

But still, one moment, he lingered in the doorway. Lingered and looked
back, as though in his mind's eye he would have borne the place away
with him forever.

Suddenly he stooped, picked up a leaf from the bed where she had lain,
and put that, too, in his pocket where the kerchief was.

Then, looking no more behind him, he strode off across the maple-grove,
through which, now, the first pale stars were glimmering. He reached the
road again, swung to the north, and, striking into his long marching
stride, pushed onward northward, away and away into the soft June
twilight.

CHAPTER XVI.

TIGER WALDRON "COMES BACK."

Old Isaac Flint loved but two things in all this world--power, and his
daughter Catherine.

I speak advisedly in putting "power" first. Much as he idolized the
girl, much as she reminded him of the long-dead wife of his youth, he
could have survived the loss of her. The loss of power would inevitably
h