gs, "and are
holdin' it inside."

They were turning quickly in that direction, when Wyngate said,
"Hush!--some one's there in the brush under the buckeyes."

They listened; there was a faint rustling in the shadows.

"Come out o' that, Brown--into the open. Don't be shy," called out Rice
in cheerful irony. "We're waitin' for ye."

But Briggs, who was nearest the wood, here suddenly uttered an
exclamation,--"B'gosh!" and fell back, open-mouthed, upon his
companions. They too, in another moment, broke into a feeble laugh, and
lapsed against each other in sheepish silence. For a very pretty girl,
handsomely dressed, swept out of the wood and advanced towards them.

Even at any time she would have been an enchanting vision to these men,
but in the glow of exercise and sparkle of anger she was bewildering.
Her wonderful hair, the color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from
her hat in her passage through the underbrush, and even as she swept
down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a hairpin into it with a
dexterous feminine hand.

The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells
alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip
showing her white teeth with her panting breath.

Rice was first to speak. "I beg--your pardon, Miss--I thought it was
Brown--you know," he stammered.

But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the culprit, curled her
short lip till it almost vanished in her scornful nostrils, drew her
skirt aside with a jerk, and continued her way straight to Jackson
Wells, where she halted.

"We did not know you were--here alone," he said apologetically.

"Thought I was afraid to come alone, didn't you? Well, you see, I'm not.
There!" She made another dive at her hat and hair, and brought the hat
down wickedly over her eyebrows. "Gimme my plants."

Jackson had been astonished. He would have scarcely recognized in this
willful beauty the red-haired girl whom he had boyishly hated, and with
whom he had often quarreled. But there was a recollection--and with that
recollection came an instinct of habit. He looked her squarely in the
face, and, to the horror of his partners, said, "Say please!"

They had expected to see him fall, smitten with the hairpin! But she
only stopped, and then in bitter irony said, "Please, Mr. Jackson
Wells."

"I haven't dug them up yet--and it would serve you just right if I
made you get them for yourself. But perhaps my frien