She shook her head and looked about as if now she were afraid that some one might hear. But the other boarders were talking among themselves. Mrs. Goodwin, at the far end of the bench, was giving to Blakemore her idea of the future life; Mrs. Blakemore had run off, summoned by an alarming howl from the boy; Mrs. Stuvic, still a believer in spiritualism and a devotee of fortune-telling, stood near, sniffing in contempt. "Nothing can keep us apart," said Milford. "I'm not a soft wooer; I don't know how to play the he dove; I don't know how to sing a lie made by some one else; I don't pretend to be a gentleman; I am out of the rut, and they may call me unnatural. But let me tell you that all hell can't keep us apart." "Mr. Milford, you must not talk like that. I too am out of the rut, and they may call me unnatural, but I do not like to hear you talk that way." "Yes, you do. You can't help yourself. If it's the devil that brought us together, then blessed be the name of the devil." "Hush, Mr. Milford." "I won't hush. I must talk. I suppose I ought to call you an angel. But you are not. You are a woman--once a hired hand. But you jump on me like a panther; you suck the blood out of my heart. Am I a brute? Yes. So are you. You are a beautiful brute--the panther and the grizzly. Is that it?" She looked at him, and her eyes were not soft. "I used to peep in at the grizzly--into the dining-room when he had come to feed. But no more now. No, nothing can keep us apart. But we must wait. What a courtship!" she said, with a sigh. "It's not a courtship," he replied. "It's a fight, a draw fight. Now I'll hush. What's the wrangle?" he asked, turning toward Mrs. Goodwin. "Nothing," she answered, moving closer to him. "It hasn't the dignity of a wrangle. Mrs. Stuvic is trying to convert me to fortune-telling." "Nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Stuvic. "I don't care whether she believes in it or not. It's nothin' to me; but truth's truth, and you can't get round it; no, Bill, you bet. I know what I've been told, and I know what's come to pass. A woman told me that a man was goin' to beat me out of board, and he did. She never saw him. How about that? And she told me I was goin' to lose a cow, and I did. She was dead by the time I got home. How about that? Don't come talkin' to me about what you expect after you're dead. Truth's truth. Now, there's Bill. He thinks I'm an old fool. But I know more than he thinks I do. Yes, you bet!" "No, I don't think that, Mrs. Stuvic," Milford replied. "I'm under too many obligations to you to think that." "Now, there is honesty," Mrs. Goodwin spoke up. "Gunhild, my dear, do you catch the drift of it?" "It's not honesty, but villainy," Blakemore declared, and turning to his wife, who had just returned, he asked if the boy were hurt. She said that he had got hung in the forks of an apple tree. "But villainy holds a virtue when it tells the truth," Mrs. Goodwin replied.