estion.
"Don't tell me!"

Ruth's eyes quickly sought his brother's, and were as quickly averted,
as he asked hurriedly, "How?"

"What gets me," continued Rand in a petulant non sequitur, "is that YOU,
my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer, permiskus like,
when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and promanadin', and
swoppin' sentiments and mottoes."

Ruth tried to contradict his blushing face with a laugh of worldly
indifference.

"She came up yer on a sort of pasear."

"Oh, yes!--a short cut to the creek," interpolated Rand satirically.

"Last Tuesday or Wednesday," continued Ruth, with affected
forgetfulness.

"Oh, in course, Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday! You've so many folks
climbing up this yer mountain to call on ye," continued the ironical
Rand, "that you disremember; only you remembered enough not to tell me.
SHE did. She took me for you, or pretended to."

The color dropped from Ruth's cheek.

"Took you for me?" he asked, with an awkward laugh.

"Yes," sneered Rand; "chirped and chattered away about OUR picnic, OUR
nose-gays, and lord knows what! Said she'd keep them blue-jay's wings,
and wear 'em in her hat. Spouted poetry, too,--the same sort o' rot you
get off now and then."

Ruth laughed again, but rather ostentatiously and nervously.

"Ruth, look yer!"

Ruth faced his brother.

"What's your little game? Do you mean to say you don't know what thet
gal is? Do you mean to say you don't know thet she's the laughing-stock
of the Ferry; thet her father's a d----d old fool, and her mother's a
drunkard and worse; thet she's got any right to be hanging round yer?
You can't mean to marry her, even if you kalkilate to turn me out to do
it, for she wouldn't live alone with ye up here. 'Tain't her kind. And
if I thought you was thinking of--"

"What?" said Ruth, turning upon his brother quickly.

"Oh, thet's right! holler; swear and yell, and break things, do! Tear
round!" continued Rand, kicking his boots off in a corner, "just because
I ask you a civil question. That's brotherly," he added, jerking his
chair away against the side of the cabin, "ain't it?"

"She's not to blame because her mother drinks, and her father's a
shyster," said Ruth earnestly and strongly. "The men who make her the
laughing-stock of the Ferry tried to make her something worse, and
failed, and take this sneak's revenge on her. 'Laughing-stock!' Yes,
they knew she could turn the tables on them