nd receding on the waves of verse; though
it meant nothing to her that one who had the gift of pleasant sound was
using it on her behalf.

This was not apparent to her Bulrush, though Crozier and Kitty
understood. Jesse only saw in the blue-garbed, clear-visaged woman a
mistress of his heart, who had all the virtues and graces and who did
not talk. That, to him, was the best thing of all. She was a superb
listener, and he was a prodigious talker--was it not all appropriate?

One day he went searching for Kitty at her favourite retreat, a little
knoll behind and to the left of the house, where a half-dozen trees made
a pleasant resting-place at a fine look-out point. He found her in her
usual place, with a look almost pensive on her face. He did not notice
that, for he was excited and elated.

"I want to read you something I've written," he said, and he drew from
his pocket a paper.

"If it's another description of the timber-land you have for
sale-please, not to me," she answered provokingly, for she guessed well
what he held in his hand. She had seen him writing it. She had even seen
some of the lines scrawled and re-scrawled on bits of paper, showing
careful if not swift and skillful manufacture. One of these crumpled-up
bits of paper she had in her pocket now, having recovered it that she
might tease him by quoting the lines at a provoking opportunity.

"It's not that. It's some verses I've written," he said, with a wave of
his hand.

"All your own?" she asked with an air of assumed innocent interest, and
he did not see the frivolous gleam in her eyes, or notice the touch of
aloes on her tongue.

"Yes. Yes. I've always written verses more or less--I write a good many
advertisements in verse," he added cheerfully. "They are very popular.
Not genius, quite, but there it is, the gift; and it has its uses in
commerce as in affairs of the heart. But if you'd rather not, if it
makes you tired--"

"Courage, soldier, bear your burden," she said gaily. "Mount your horse
and get galloping," she added, motioning him to sit.

A moment later he was pouring out his soul through a pleasing voice,
from fat lips, flanked by a high-coloured healthy cheek like a russet
apple:

"Like jewels of the sky they gleam,
Your eyes of light, your eyes of fire;
In their dark depths behold the dream
Of Life's glad hope and Love's desire.

"Above your quiet brow, endowed
With Grecian cha