?" he said, suddenly.

"A guest!" she faltered.

A new mood was on him; he was smiling now.

"Yes, a guest. It is Thanksgiving Day, Miss Jocelyn. Will you and your
father forget old quarrels--and perhaps forgive?"

Again she rested her slender hands on his dogs' heads, looking out over
the valley.

"Will you forgive?" he asked, in a low voice.

"I? Yes," she said, startled.

"Then," he went on, smiling, "you must invite me to be your guest. When
I look at that partridge, Miss Jocelyn, hunger makes me shameless. I
want a second-joint--indeed I do!"

Her sensitive lips trembled into a smile, but she could not meet his
eyes yet.

"Our Thanksgiving dinner would horrify you," she said--"a pickerel taken
on a gang-hook, woodcock shot in Brier Brook swales, and this
partridge--" She hesitated.

"And that partridge a victim to his own rash passion for winter grapes,"
added Gordon, laughing.

The laugh did them both good.

"I could make a chestnut stuffing," she said, timidly.

"Splendid! Splendid!" murmured Gordon.

"Are you really coming?" she asked.

Something in her eyes held his, then he answered with heightened color,
"I am very serious, Miss Jocelyn. May I come?"

She said "Yes" under her breath. There was color enough in her lips and
cheeks now.

So young Gordon went away across the hills, whistling his dogs cheerily
on, the sunlight glimmering on the slanting barrels of his gun. They
looked back twice. The third time she looked he was gone beyond the
brown hill's crest.

She came to her own door all of a tremble. Old man Jocelyn sat sunning
his gray head on the south porch, lean hands folded over his stomach,
pipe between his teeth.

"Daddy," she said, "look!" and she held up the partridge. Jocelyn
smiled.

All the afternoon she was busy in the kitchen, and when the early
evening shadows lengthened across the purple hills she stood at the
door, brown eyes searching the northern slope.

The early dusk fell over the alder swales; the brawling brook was
sheeted with vapor.

Up-stairs she heard her father dressing in his ancient suit of rusty
black and pulling on his obsolete boots. She stole into the dining-room
and looked at the table. Three covers were laid.

She had dressed in her graduating gown--a fluffy bit of white and
ribbon. Her dark soft hair was gathered simply; a bunch of blue gentian
glimmered at her belt.

Suddenly, as she lingered over the table, she heard Gordon's step on t