and I'll take the other, or
else--I'll go alone. Don't be alarmed," she added softly; "I'm stronger
than I was the first night I came, when you carried me and all my
worldly goods besides."

She turned upon him her subtle magnetic eyes, and looked at him as she
had the first night they met. Jeff turned away bewildered, but presently
appeared again with the bag on his shoulder, and her wrap on his arm.
As she slipped her little hand over his sleeve, he began, apologetically
and nervously,

"When I said that about Aunt Sally, miss, I"--

The hand immediately became limp, the grasp conventional.

"I was mad, miss," Jeff blundered on, "and I don't see how you believed
it--knowing everything ez you do."

"How knowing everything as I do?" asked Miss Mayfield coldly.

"Why, about the quail, and about the bag!"

"Oh," said Miss Mayfield.

Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his coach in his utter
amazement at an apparently simple spectacle--a tall, good-looking young
fellow, in a red shirt and high boots, carrying a bag on his back, and
beside him, hanging confidentially on his arm, a small, slight, pretty
girl in a red cloak. "Nothing mean about her, eh, Bill?" said as
admiring box-passenger. "Young couple, I reckon, just out from the
States."

"No!" roared Bill.

"Oh, well, his sweetheart, I reckon?" suggested the box-passenger.

"Nary time!" growled Bill. "Look yer! I know 'em both, and they knows
me. Did ye notiss she never drops his arm when she sees the stage
comin', but kinder trapes along jist the same? Had they been courtin',
she'd hev dropped his arm like pizen, and walked on t'other side the
road."

Nevertheless, for some occult reason, Bill was evidently out of humor;
and for the next few miles exhorted the impenitent Blue Grass horse with
considerable fervor.

Meanwhile this pair, outwardly the picture of pastoral conjugality,
slowly descended the hill. In that brief time, failing to get at any
further facts regarding Jeff's life, or perhaps reading the story quite
plainly, Miss Mayfield had twittered prettily about herself. She painted
her tropic life in the Sandwich Islands--her delicious "laziness," as
she called it; "for, you know," she added, "although I had the excuse of
being an invalid, and of living in the laziest climate in the world, and
of having money, I think, Mr. Jeff, that I'm naturally lazy. Perhaps if
I lived here long enough, and got well again, I might do something, but