Don't you want your pipe?"

The young man blushed and scowled. "Thank you very much," he said,
extending a thin, brown hand, "I'm afraid I was rather rude. Where
did you find it?"

"Oh, down there," she answered vaguely.

He handled the pipe lovingly, knocked it against the birch stump and
cleared it further with a curl of the polished, champagne-tinted
bark.

"Nice dog," he suggested, "what's his name?"

"Henry D. Thoreau," she replied, studying the green scarab in his
necktie and the heavy seal-ring on his left hand.

"For heaven's sake! Who named him?"

"My Uncle Joe," she returned simply, "because he takes to the woods
whenever he gets the chance. Was that pin a bug once?"

"Not since I ran across it," said the young man, "before that, I
can't say. Has your uncle any other animals?"

"Oh, yes," she assured him. "There's the donkey, his name is
Rose-Marie; and the baby's cat, his name is Pharaoh Meneptah, but
the baby calls him Coo-coo; and there's Miss Honey's rabbits,
they're all named Eleanor, because you can't tell them apart, and
one name does just as well; and the canary, his name is Jean and
Edouard de Reszke."

The young man burst into laughter and fell off the stump abruptly.

"Those are fine names, all of them," he declared, picking himself up
with great solicitude for the pipe, "but why did the canary get
two?"

"Because Aunt Edith likes Jean the best, but Uncle Joe says there's
more to Edouard," she explained, "so they named him both, because
Uncle Joe said anything was better than a divided family."

"That's right," said the young man, "anything is."

His face, which had looked for a moment merry and boyish, darkened
again, and his big eyes glowered intently at the shadowy hemlocks.

"Anything," he added, in a low voice, "but a sacrifice of principle,
a sacrifice of truth, as it actually is, to the petty conventions of
a rotten society!"

With that he sat his teeth hard and pulling a leather pouch out of
his pocket, began stuffing the pipe decisively. Caroline waited for
him to continue, but as he lit the pipe and puffed at it in
silence, she concluded that the interview was at an end, and started
up the path.

"You'd better not--" he began, but stopped suddenly and appeared to
reconsider. "Oh, I don't know," he added, "it might be better, after
all. Go along."

The trail was little more than a worn line in the grass, now; soon
it turned sharply to the left, skirted the wood, an