"Listen, Dan," said Dawn earnestly. "It isn’t that at all. You’re good and dear enough for anybody, and I do love you, too, for you’ve been very good to me. I love you for yourself, too, but not in that way, Dan, for I love some one else. I loved him first and shall always love him, and—and—I belong to him. I couldn’t belong to any one else, you know, after that. I’m sorry, Dan, so sorry you feel bad about it, but you see how it is. I _belonged_ to some one else first." "Is it _him_?" he blurted out fiercely. "Oh, no, Dan! Oh, no! I’m very, very thankful it isn’t that man. If it were, I should die. I couldn’t love him. You wouldn’t think I could!" There was silence in the quiet woods for a moment. "It ain’t Sile Dobson?" he asked fearfully at last. Dawn’s laugh burst out softly then. "Oh, Dan! You know better than that. You knew without asking. How could any one love him? No, Dan; the one I belong to is fine and grand and noble—everything he ought to be." "Then, why doesn’t he take care of you?" burst forth Dan indignantly. "I wouldn’t let you teach school if you belonged to me, and I wouldn’t let that fellow frighten you. He can’t be all you say, or he’d take care of you." Dawn’s cheeks were very red. "He doesn’t know where I am," she said softly. "I went away because—well, it was for a good reason. It was for his sake. I had to go. Things had happened. I can’t tell you about it, but it would have made him trouble if I had stayed." Dan sat looking at her steadily, a great, wistful yearning in his eyes. "I guess you’re wrong ’bout that," he said thoughtfully. "I guess he’d rather have you _an’_ the trouble, than to have no trouble without you. Leastways, I would, an’ ef he don’t love you that way, he ain’t much account." A troubled look came into Dawn’s eyes. It was the first time she had questioned, from Charles’s standpoint, the wisdom of her running way. "It would have made a lot of trouble all around," she said, shaking her head doubtfully. "Say, look here!" said Dan, sitting up suddenly. "You tell me where that fellow is, an’ I’ll go tell him all about you, and how that other fellow is worrying you, and how you need him to take care o’ you; an’ then if he don’t seem to want to find you and look out for you, why, I won’t tell him where you are. I’ll come back and take care of you myself, any way. You needn’t like me nor anything if you don’t want to, but I ain’t going to stand having you off running around the world, frightened of that fellow all the time, not if I have to chop him up myself. I tell you, I _love_ you!" Dan’s blue eyes were flashing, and his cheeks were red with determination. He had let go of her hand as if it were a gracious favor she had bestowed upon him for the moment in his dire distress, and he had no right to keep it, but Dawn put it out again and laid it on his gently.