thing she had forgotten.

Suddenly she became all attention, and a hot flush of anger mounted to
her face as she saw her aunt walk to the table, pick up her purse and
several rings which she had left, and with a glance at the thick, log
wall which separated the room from the office, deliberately walk to her
trunk and place the articles under lock and key.

Apparently Mrs. Appleton had not noticed the girl's presence, but more
than once during the afternoon the corners of her mouth twitched when,
in response to some question or remark of hers, the shortness of the
girl's replies bordered upon absolute rudeness.

And late that night she smiled broadly in the darkness when the low
sound of stifled sobs came from the direction of the girl's cot.

Immediately after breakfast the following morning, Ethel put on her
wraps and started out alone. Arriving, after a long, aimless ramble, at
the outermost end of a skidway, she sat upon a log to rest and watch a
huge swamper who, unaware of her presence, was engaged in slashing the
underbrush from in front of a group of large logs.

Finally, tiring of the sight, she arose and started for the clearing,
and then suddenly drew back and stepped behind the bole of a great
pine, for, striding rapidly toward her on the skidway was Bill Carmody,
and she pressed still closer to the tree-trunk that he might pass
without observing her.

He was very close now, and the girl noticed the peculiar expression of
his face--an expression she had seen there once before--his lips were
smiling, and his gray eyes were narrowed almost to slits.

The man halted scarcely fifty feet from her, at the place where the
swamper, with wide blows of his axe, was laying the small saplings and
brushwood low. She started at the cold softness of the tones of his
voice.

"Leduc," he said, "just a minute--it will hardly take longer."

The man turned quickly at the sound of the voice at his side, and for
the space of seconds the two big men faced each other on the packed
snow of the skidway.

Then, with a motion of incredible swiftness, and without apparent
effort, the foreman's right arm shot out and his fist landed squarely
upon the nose of the huge swamper.

The girl heard the wicked spat, and the peculiar, frightened grunt as
the man reeled backward, and saw the quick gush of red blood that
splashed down his front and squirted out over the snow.

Before the man had time to recover, the foreman advanced a