oaked?"

"To see you excited."

"That wouldn't excite me; I should only be wet and depressed. In any
case it is time for us to turn back."

"No, I've set my heart upon going at least as far as that ridge." And
she indicated a little rise of land on the other side of the stream,
whose summit was covered thickly with Dr. Kirby's andromedas, and
shining laurel, sprays of yellow jessamine, bright with flowers, pushing
through the darker green and springing into the air. "There's a bridge,"
she added.

Winthrop turned; a felled pine-tree, roughly smoothed, crossed the
stream a short distance below the ford.

"You can tie the horses here, and we will walk over," pursued Garda.

"Then will you come back?" he asked, amused by her taking it as a matter
of course, always, that she was to have her own way.

"Then I will come back."

He tied the horses to two pine-trees, some distance apart from each
other. Then he tried the bridge. It seemed firm. Garda, refusing his
offers of assistance, crossed lightly and fearlessly behind him. Some of
the twigs still remained on the old trunk, and she lifted her skirt so
that they should not catch upon it and cause her to stumble; when they
had gone nearly three-quarters of the distance, Winthrop, turning his
head to speak to her, saw that she wore low slippers, thin-soled papery
little shoes fit only for a carpeted floor. "You must not go among the
bushes in those shoes," he said. "The bushes over there are sure to be
wet; all that ground is wet."

"Don't stop on the bridge," said Garda, laughing.

But he continued to bar the way. "I will bring you the flowers," he
said.

"I don't want the flowers, I want to go myself to the top of that ridge,
and look down on the other side."

"There's nothing to see on the other side."

"That makes no difference. Go on. Go on."

He turned round; cautiously, for the bridge was slippery and narrow.
They were now face to face.

"I shall never yield," Garda declared, gayly. "But I shall make _you_
yield. Easily."

"How?"

"By telling you that if you do not go on, I shall jump into the water,
and get to the other bank in that way."

He laughed. But as he did so he suddenly felt a conviction come over
him, owing to an expression he saw in her eyes, that she was capable of
carrying out her threat. He seized her hands; but she wrested them from
his grasp; and as she did so he had a vision of her figure in the water
below. He could easily re