en the thistles were no longer a sting
to the touch but down drifting along the lightest breeze, two horses
stopped at McCalloway's fence, and a girl's voice called out, "Can we
come in?"

Boone had not known that Anne Masters was back on this side of the
Atlantic, nor had he ventured to hope that she would find time to come
up here into the hills before the summer ended, but the voice had
brought him out to the stile, as swiftly as a cry for help could have
done. Now he stood, looking up at her as she sat in her saddle, with a
blaze of worship in his blue eyes that went far to undo all the
self-restraint with which he had so studiously hedged about his speech
and manner. Surprise has undone many wary generals. So his eyes made
love to her, even while his lips remained guarded of utterance.

"I didn't have any idea that you were on this side of the world," he
declared. "It's just plum taken my breath away from me to see you
sitting right there on that horse."

Larry Masters had dismounted and was hitching his mule. Now he turned to
inquire, "Where's Mr. McCalloway?"

The boy had momentarily forgotten the existence of his patron. He had
forgotten all things but one, and now he laughed with guilty
realization.

"I reckon I'll have to ask your pardon, sir. I was so astonished that I
forgot to tell you he wasn't here. He's gone fishing--and I'm afraid he
won't be back before sundown."

"Well, we've ridden across the mountain and we're tired. If you don't
mind we'll wait for him."

Anne reached down into her saddle bags and produced a small, neatly
wrapped package.

"I brought you a present," she announced with a sudden diffidence, and
Boone remembered how once before, as he stood by a fence, she had spoken
almost the same words. Then, too, she had been looking down on him from
the superior position of one mounted. He wondered if she remembered, and
in excellent mimicry of his old boyish awkwardness he said, "Thet war
right charitable of ye.... Hit's ther fust present I ever got--from
acrost ther ocean-sea."

Anne's laugh rippled out, and she followed suit--quoting herself from
the memory of other years:

"Oh, no, it isn't that at all. Please don't think it's charity." Then
she slid down and watched him as he unwrapped and investigated his gift;
a miniature bust of Bonaparte, the Conqueror, in Parian marble. The
light August breeze stirred the curls against her cheeks with a delicate
play--but they stirred agai