Here he was--he could not comprehend it--here, all alone, save for her, in the forest, miles away from any other human being! He had wholly loved but two things all his life--her and nature--and the three of them--she, nature and he--were here together! It was wonderful! And there in that preposterous covering of canvas, half hid in the forest's edge, was Jean Cor--no, Jean Harlson, belonging to him--all his--away from all the world, just part of him, in this solitude! He wondered why he had deserved it. He wondered how he had won it. He looked up at the pure sky, with the moon defined so clearly, and all the stars, and was grateful, and reached out his hands and asked the Being of it to tell him, if it might be, how to do something as an offset. The night passed, and the sun rose clearly over the forest. The chestnut setter roused himself from behind the tent, and came in front of it, and barked joyously at a yellow-hammer which had chosen a great basswood tree with deadened spaces for an early morning experiment toward a breakfast. There issued from the white tent a man, who looked upward toward all the greenness and all the glory, and was glad. He looked downward at the sward, and there was the little flower. And the dew had run its course, and had gathered in a jewel at the leaf's tip, and there, fallen in the midst of the disk of yellow, was the product from the skies. There, in the flower's heart, was the perfect gem--a diamond in a setting of fine gold! CHAPTER XXVI. ADVENTURES MANIFOLD. "I've et hearty," said the woman, saucily, as the breakfast, for which the birds furnished the music, was done. And then he initiated her into the brief art of washing tin things in the gravel at the water's edge. Then he informed her that target practice was about to begin, and brought out four guns from their cases. Two of the pieces were rifles, and of each kind one was a light and dainty piece. He said they would practice with the rifles; that when she became an expert rifle-shot the rest would all be easy, and then upon the boll of a tree at one side of the opening he pinned a red scrap of paper, and shot at it. With the report half the scrap was torn away, and then he taught her how to hold the piece and how to aim. She expressed, at last, a desire to shoot, and he gave her the little rifle loaded. She aimed swiftly and desperately, and pressed the trigger, and the echoes had not died away when she let fall the gun upon the grass. "I'm hurt," she said. He sprang to her side, pale-faced, as she raised her hand to her shoulder, but he brightened a moment later. He opened the dress at her neck, and turned it down on one side, and there, on the round, white shoulder, was a slight ruddy bruise. He kissed it, and laughed. "It'll be all right in no time. Now, do as I tell you." He put a cartridge in the piece again.