"You'll just stay where ye are, Salomy," said her father decisively.
"This ain't no woman's work--though I ain't sayin' you haven't got
more head for it than some men I know." Nevertheless, that night,
after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane sat by the open window
of the sitting-room in an apparent attitude of languid contemplation,
but alert and intent of eye and ear. It was a fine moonlit night. Two
pines near the door, solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant
forest, cast long shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their
spiced breath in the windows. For there was no frivolity of vine or
flower round Salomy Jane's bower. The clearing was too recent, the
life too practical for vanities like these. But the moon added a vague
elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the sheds,
gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with merciful
indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the gaunt scars
of burnt vegetation before the door. Even Salomy Jane was affected by
it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn with the breath of
the pines. Then she suddenly sat upright.

Her quick ear had caught a faint "click, click," in the direction
of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to
determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty ground;
her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the spot where
the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a quarter of a mile
from where she sat, and within the clearing. It was no errant "stock,"
for the foot was _shod_ with iron; it was a mounted trespasser by
night, and boded no good to a man like Clay.

She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than
shelter, and passed out of the door. A sudden impulse made her seize
her father's shotgun from the corner where it stood,--not that she
feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse. She made
directly for the wood, keeping in the shadow of the pines as long as
she could. At the fringe she halted; whoever was there must pass her
before reaching the house.

Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature. Everything was
deadly still--even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon
there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns,
and then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight. It was the
horse-thief--the man she had kissed!

For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane int