uggled up into the man's face which was not there before.
There was a new light in his grave eyes. "You look the same," he said
slowly; "but you are married--you have a husband."

"You think that changes a girl?" she said, with a laugh "That's where
all you men slip up! You're afraid of his rifle--THAT'S the change that
bothers you, Mad."

"You know I care little for carnal weapons," he said quietly. She DID
know it; but it is the privilege of the sex to invent its facts and then
to graciously abandon them as if they were only arguments. "Then why do
you keep off from me? Why do you look the other way when I pass?" she
said quickly.

"Because you are married," he said slowly.

She again shook the water from her like a Newfoundland dog. "That's it.
You're mad because I got married. You're mad because I wouldn't marry
you and your church over on the cross roads, and sing hymns with you and
become SISTER Wayne. You wanted me to give up dancing and buggy ridin'
Sundays--and you're just mad because I didn't. Yes, mad--just mean, baby
mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all your CHRISTIAN resignation! That's what's
the matter with you." Yet she looked very pretty and piquant in her
small spitefulness, which was still so general and superficial that
she seemed to shake it out of her wet petticoats in a vicious flap that
disclosed her neat ankles.

"You preferred McGee to me," he said grimly. "I didn't blame you."

"Who said I PREFERRED him?" she retorted quickly. "Much you know!"
Then, with swift feminine abandonment of her position, she added, with a
little laugh, "It's all the same whether you're guarded with a rifle or
a Church Presbytery, only"--

"Only what?" said Madison earnestly.

"There's men who'd risk being SHOT for a girl, that couldn't stand
psalm-singin' palaver."

The quick expression of pain that passed over his hard, dark face seemed
only to heighten her pretty mischievousness. But he simply glanced again
around the solitude, passed his hand over his wet sleeve, and said, "I
must go now; your husband wouldn't like me being here."

"He's workin' in the claim,--the claim YOU gave him," said Mrs. McGee,
with cheerful malice. "Wonder what he'd say if he knew it was given to
him by the man who used to spark his wife only two years ago? How does
that suit your Christian conscience, Mad?"

"I should have told him, had I not believed that everything was over
between us, or that it was possible that you and me shoul