ties when he was not at hand.

She laughingly commented upon this one day to Burke, and he amazed
her by pointing to the riding-whip she chanced to be holding at the
time.

"You'll find that's the only medicine for that kind of thing," he
said. "Give 'em a taste of that and they'll respect you!"

She decided he must be joking, but only a few days later he quite
undeceived her on that point by dragging Joe, the house boy, into
the yard and chastising him with a _sjambok_ for some neglected
duty.

Joe howled lustily, and Sylvia yearned to fly to the rescue, but
there was something so judicial about Burke's administration of
punishment that she did not venture to intervene.

When he came in a little later, she was sitting in their
living-room nervously stitching at the sleeve of a shirt that he
had managed to tear on some barbed wire. He had his pipe in his
hand, and there was an air of grim satisfaction about him that
seemed to denote a consciousness of something well done.

Sylvia set her mouth hard and stitched rapidly, trying to forget
Joe's piercing yells of a few minutes before. Burke went to the
window and stood there, pensively filling his pipe.

Suddenly, as if something in her silence struck him, he turned and
looked at her. She felt his eyes upon her though she did not raise
her own.

After a moment or two he came to her. "What are you doing there?"
he said.

It was the first piece of work she had done for him. She glanced
up. "Mending your shirt," she told him briefly.

He laid his hand abruptly upon it. "What are you doing that for?
I don't want you to mend my things."

"Oh, don't be silly, Burke!" she said. "You can't go in tatters.
Please don't hinder me! I want to get it done."

She spoke with a touch of sharpness, not feeling very kindly
disposed towards him at the moment. She was still somewhat
agitated, and she wished with all her heart that he would go and
leave her alone.

She almost said as much in the next, breath as he did not remove
his hand. "Why don't you go and shoot something? There's plenty
of time before supper."

"What's the matter?" said Burke.

"Nothing," she returned, trying to remove her work from his grasp.

"Nothing!" he echoed. "Then why am I told not to be silly, not to
hinder you, and to go and shoot something?"

Sylvia sat up in her chair, and faced him. "If you must have it--I
think you've been--rather brutal," she said, lifting her clear eye