"You deal death mercifully," said the girl in a low voice. "I wonder
what your ci-devant sweetheart would think of you."

"A bungler had better stick to the traps," he assented, ignoring the
badinage.

"I am wondering," she said thoughtfully, "what I think of men who kill."

He turned sharply, hesitated, shrugged. "Wild things' lives are brief at
best--fox or flying-tick, wet nests or mink, owl, hawk, weasel or
man. But the death man deals is the most merciful. Besides," he added,
laughing, "ours is not a case of sweethearts."

"My argument is purely in the abstract, Mr. Siward. I am asking you
whether the death men deal is more justifiable than a woman's gift of
death?"

"Oh, well, life-taking, the giving of life--there can be only one answer
to the mystery; and I don't know it," he replied smiling.

"I do."

"Tell me then," he said, still amused.

They had passed swale after swale of silver birches waist deep in
perfumed fern and brake; the big timber lay before them. She moved
forward, light gun swung easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and
on the wood's sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against
a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees.

"You are feeling the pace a little," he said, coming up and standing in
front of her.

"The pace? No, Mr. Siward."

"Are you a trifle--bored?" She considered him in silence, then leaned
back luxuriously, rounded arms raised, wrists crossed to pillow her
head.

"This is charmingly new to me," she said simply.

"What? Not the open?"

"No; I have camped and done the usual roughing it with only three guides
apiece and the champagne inadequately chilled. I have endured that sort
of hardship several times, Mr. Siward. ... What is that furry hunch up
there in that tall thin tree?"

"A raccoon," he said presently. "Can you see the foxy head peeping so
slyly down at us? Look at Sagamore nosing the air in that droll blind
mole-like way. He knows there's something furry up aloft somewhere; and
he knows it's none of his business."

They watched the motionless ball of fur in the crotch of a slim forest
elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded;
the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the
tangent foliage of an enormous oak, vanished amid bronzing leafy depths.

In the silence the birds began to reappear. A jay screamed somewhere
deep in the yellowing woods; black-capped chickadee