ly able to give or refuse the permission I ask."

"And what if I refuse?"

"Then I have only to ask pardon for having troubled you, go back, and
return here with the tide. You don't resist THAT with a shotgun, do
you?" he asked pleasantly.

Maggie Culpepper was already familiar with the accepted theory of the
supreme jurisdiction of the Federal Sea. She half turned her back upon
him, partly to show her contempt, but partly to evade the domination of
his clear, good-humored, and self-sustained little eyes.

"I don't know anythin' about your deserters, nor what rags o' theirs
happen to be floated up here," she said, angrily, "and don't care to.
You kin do what you like."

"Then I'm afraid I should remain here a little longer, Miss Culpepper;
but my duty"--

"Your wot?" she interrupted, disdainfully.

"I suppose I AM talking shop," he said smilingly. "Then my business"--

"Your business--pickin' up half-starved runaways!"

"And, I trust, sometimes a kind friend," he suggested, with a grave bow.

"You TRUST? Look yer, young man," she said, with her quick, fierce,
little laugh, "I reckon you TRUST a heap too much!" She would like to
have added, "with your freckled face, red hair, and little eyes"--but
this would have obliged her to face them again, which she did not care
to do.

Calvert stepped back, lifted his hand to his cap, still pleasantly, and
then walked gravely along the gallery, down the steps, and towards the
cover. From her window, unseen, she followed his neat little figure
moving undeviatingly on, without looking to the left or right, and
still less towards the house he had just quitted. Then she saw the
sunlight flash on cross-belt plates and steel barrels, and a light blue
line issued from out the dark green bushes, round the point, and
disappeared. And then it suddenly occurred to her what she had been
doing! This, then, was her first step towards that fancy she had so
lately conceived, quarrelled over with her brother, and lay awake last
night to place anew, in spite of all opposition! This was her
brilliant idea of dazzling and subduing Logport and the Fort! Had she
grown silly, or what had happened? Could she have dreamed of the
coming of this whipper-snapper, with his insufferable airs, after that
beggarly deserter? I am afraid that for a few moments the miserable
fugitive had as small a place in Maggie's sympathy as the redoubtable
whipper-snapper himself. And now the cherished