ided it was just a freak of
coquettishness in Bela.

"All right," said Jack. "Anything to oblige." Turning, he opened the
door and shouted for Sam.

Sam presently appeared, tousled and flushed with sleep, his blue eyes
scornfully resentful.

"What do you want now?" he demanded. "You made me lose sleep last
night."

"Well," said Jack, "all that is over. We're askin' Bela here to choose
between us and settle the thing for good. We've all said our say, but
she allowed she wanted to hear what the cook had to offer before she
closed. Speak up."

Sam was efficaciously startled into wakefulness. He became very pale,
and fixed Bela with a kind of angry glare. It seemed to him like a
horrible burlesque of something sacred. He hated her for allowing it.
He did not reflect that she might not have been able to prevent it.
She did not look at him.

"Do I understand right?" he said stiffly. "You're all proposing to her
in a body?"

"That's right," said Jack. "And out of goodness of heart she gives you
a chance, too."

Sam's jaw snapped together, and his mouth became a hard line.

"Much obliged," he said. "I resign my chance. I'm not looking for a
wife." He went back into the house.

It was not what the other men expected to hear. Suspecting an insult
to the object of their own desires, they turned on him angrily. They
would never have allowed him to have her, but neither should he turn
her down.

"And a good thing for you, too!" cried Joe.

"By George, I've a good mind to thrash him for that!" muttered Jack.

His attention was attracted in the other direction by a laugh from
Bela. It had anything but a merry sound, but their ears were not sharp
enough to detect the lack. Bela's nostrils were dilated, and her lip
oddly turned back. But she laughed.

"He is fonny cook!" she said. "I got laugh!"

"Oh, never mind him!" said Big Jack. "He doesn't count! What is your
answer?"

Bela stopped laughing. "Well, I got think about it," she said. "I tell
you to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITTLE MEADOW

The situation at Nine-Mile Point was not improved by the wholesale
proposal for Bela's hand. The twenty-four hours she required for her
answer promised to be hard to get through.

The interim of waiting for a lady to make up her mind is sufficiently
trying on a man's nerves under the most favourable circumstances; but
to be obliged to endure the company of all his rivals meanwhile was
almost too much.

Breakf