sy with these and
similar reflections, when some one said: "Good morning, Mr. Paine."

I stopped short, came out of the day dream in which I had been giving
Captain Jed my opinion of his followers' behavior, looked up, and saw
Miss Colton in the path before me.

She was dressed in white, a light, simple summer gown. Her straw hat was
simple also, expensive simplicity doubtless, but without a trace of the
horticultural exhibits with which Olinda Cahoon, our Denboro milliner,
was wont to deck the creations she prepared for customers. Matilda
Dean would have sniffed at the hat and gown; they were not nearly as
elaborate as those Nellie, her daughter, wore on Sundays. But Matilda or
Nellie at their grandest could not have appeared as well dressed as this
girl, no matter what she wore. Just now she looked, as Lute or Dorinda
might have said, "as if she came out of a band box."

"Good morning," she said, again. She was perfectly self-possessed.
Remembrance of our transit of Mullet's cranberry brook did not seem to
embarrass her in the least. Nellie Dean would have giggled and blushed,
but she did not.

_I_ was embarrassed, I admit it, but I had sufficient presence of mind
to remove my hat.

"Good morning," said I. There flashed through my mind the thought that
if she had been in that grove for any length of time she must have
overheard my lively interview with Kendrick and Tim Hallet. I wondered
if she had.

Her next remark settled that question.

"I suppose," she said, soberly, but with the same twinkle in her eye
which I had observed once or twice in her father's, "that I should
apologize for being here, on your property, Mr. Paine. I judge that you
don't like trespassers."

I was more nettled at Zeb and his crowd than ever. "So you saw that
performance," I said. "I'm sorry."

"I saw a little of it, and I'm afraid I heard the rest. I was walking
here by the bluff and I could not help seeing and hearing."

"Humph! Well, I hope you understand, Miss Colton, that I did not know,
until just now, this sort of thing was going on."

She smiled. "Oh, I understand that," she said. "You made that quite
plain. Even those people in the wagon understood it, I should imagine."

"I hope they did."

"I did not know you could be so fierce, Mr. Paine. I had not expected
it. You almost frightened me. You were so very--well, mild and
long-suffering on the other occasions when we met."

"I am not always so mild, Miss Colton. Ho