" he said.

She looked at him, still smiling. She gazed off through the forest,
where the men were going home, shovels shouldered, the blades of axe and
spade blood-red in the sunset light.

How long they stood there she scarcely reckoned, until a clear primrose
light crept in among the trees, and the evening mist rose from an unseen
pond, floating through the dimmed avenues of pines.

"Good-night," she said, gathered bridle, hesitated, then held out her
ungloved hand.

Galloping homeward, the quick pressure of his hand still burning her
palm, she swept along in a maze of disordered thought. And being by
circumstances, though not by inclination, an orderly young woman, she
attempted a mental reorganization. This she completed as she wheeled her
mare into the main forest road; and, her happy, disordered thoughts
rearranged with a layer of cold logic to quiet them, reaction came
swiftly; her cheeks burned when she remembered her own attitude of
half-accepted intimacy with this stranger. How did he regard her? How
cheaply did he already hold her--this young man idling here in the
forest for his own pleasure?

But she had something more important on hand than the pleasures of
remorseful cogitation as she rode up to the store and drew bridle, where
in their shirt-sleeves the prominent citizens were gathered. She began
to speak immediately. She did not mince matters; she enumerated them by
name, dwelt coldly upon the law governing arson, and told them exactly
where they stood.

She was, by courtesy of long residence, one of them. She taught their
children, she gave them pills and powders, she had stood by them even
when they had the law against them--stood by them loyally and in the
very presence of Grier, fencing with him at every move, combating his
brutality with deadly intelligence.

They collapsed under her superior knowledge; they trusted her, fawned on
her, whined when she rebuked them, carried themselves more decently for
a day or two when she dropped a rare word of commendation. They
respected her in spite of the latent ruffianly instinct which sneers at
women; they feared her as a parish fears its priest; they loved her as
they loved one another--which was rather toleration than affection; the
toleration of half-starved bob-cats.

And now the school-marm had turned on them--turned on them with
undisguised contempt. Never before had she betrayed contempt for them.
She spoke of cowardice, too. That bewildere