asures in Heaven. He was surprised, too, to
learn that cows could be made draught animals. He had always thought of
them as good for nothing but giving milk. In fact I found myself so much
wiser than he was in the things we had been discussing that when he
began to talk to me about Virginia and the impossibility of our going
together as we had been doing, it marked quite a change in our
relationship--he having been the scholar and I the teacher.

"Quite a strange meeting," said he, "between you and Miss Royall."

"Yes," said I, thinking it over, from that first wolf-hunted approach to
my camp to our yesterday of clouds and sunshine; "I never had anything
like it happen to me."

"Mrs. Thorndyke," said he, "is a mighty smart woman. She knows what'll
do, and what won't do better than--than any of us."

I wasn't ready to admit this, and therefore said nothing.

"Don't you think so?" he asked.

"I do' know," I said, a little sullenly.

"A girl," said he, "has a pretty hard time in life if she loses her
reputation."

Again I made no reply.

"You are just two thoughtless children," said he; "aren't you now?"

"She's nothing," said I, "but a little innocent child!"

"Now that's so," said he, "that's so; but after all she's old enough so
that evil things might be thought of her--evil things might be said; and
there'd be no answer to them, no answer. Why, she's a woman grown--a
woman grown; and as for you, you're getting a beard. This won't do, you
know; it is all right if there were just you and Miss Royall and my wife
and me in the world; but you wouldn't think for a minute of traveling
with this little girl the way you have been--the way you speak of doing,
I mean--if you knew that in the future, when she must make her way in
the world with nothing' but her friends, this little boy-and-girl
experience might take her friends from her; and when she will have
nothing but her good name you don't want, and would not for the world
have anything thoughtlessly done now, that might take her good name from
her. You are too young to understand this as you will some day----"

"The trouble with me," I blurted out, "is that I've never had much to do
with good women--only with my mother and Mrs. Fogg--and they could never
have anything said against them--neither of them!"

"Where have you lived all your life?" he asked.

Then I told him of the way I had picked up my hat and come up instead of
being brought up, of the women al