presently there came to my ears the sound of a man's voice, and then a
woman's angry "Begone, sir!"

"Kiss and be friends," said the man.

The sound that followed being something of the loudest for even the most
hearty salutation, I was not surprised, on parting the bushes, to find
the man nursing his cheek, and the maid her hand.

"You shall pay well for that, you sweet vixen!" he cried, and caught her
by both wrists.

She struggled fiercely, bending her head this way and that, but his hot
lips had touched her face before I could come between.

When I had knocked him down he lay where he fell, dazed by the blow,
and blinking up at me with his small ferret eyes. I knew him to be one
Edward Sharpless, and I knew no good of him. He had been a lawyer in
England. He lay on the very brink of the stream, with one arm touching
the water. Flesh and blood could not resist it, so, assisted by the toe
of my boot, he took a cold bath to cool his hot blood.

When he had clambered out and had gone away, cursing, I turned to face
her. She stood against the trunk of a great cedar, her head thrown back,
a spot of angry crimson in each cheek, one small hand clenched at her
throat. I had heard her laugh as Sharpless touched the water, but now
there was only defiance in her face. As we gazed at each other, a
burst of laughter came to us from the meadow behind. I looked over my
shoulder, and beheld young Hamor, probably disappointed of a wife,--with
Giles Allen and Wynne, returning to his abandoned quarry. She saw, too,
for the crimson spread and deepened and her bosom heaved. Her dark eyes,
glancing here and there like those of a hunted creature, met my own.

"Madam," I said, "will you marry me?"

She looked at me strangely. "Do you live here?" she asked at last, with
a disdainful wave of her hand toward the town.

"No, madam," I answered. "I live up river, in Weyanoke Hundred, some
miles from here."

"Then, in God's name, let us be gone!" she cried, with sudden passion.

I bowed low, and advanced to kiss her hand.

The finger tips which she slowly and reluctantly resigned to me were
icy, and the look with which she favored me was not such an one as poets
feign for like occasions. I shrugged the shoulders of my spirit, but
said nothing. So, hand in hand, though at arms' length, we passed from
the shade of the cedars into the open meadow, where we presently met
Hamor and his party. They would have barred the way, laughing and