"I tell you no," she said, with an almost harsh practical decision, incompatible with her previous abandonment. "We might be seen together." "Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together eventually," he remonstrated. The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impatient negation, but checked herself. "Don't let us talk of that now. Come, while I am here under your own roof"--she pointed to the high interlaced boughs above them--"you must be hospitable. Show me your home; tell me, isn't it a little gloomy sometimes?" "It never has been; I never thought it _would_ be until the moment you leave it to-day." She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory way, as if her vanity had accepted and dismissed the compliment. "Take me somewhere," she said inquisitively, "where you stay most; I do not seem to see you _here_," she added, looking around her with a slight shiver. "It is so big and so high. Have you no place where you eat and rest and sleep?" "Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place--at any spot where I may have been shooting or collecting." "Collecting?" queried Nellie. "Yes; with the herbarium, you know." "Yes," said Nellie dubiously. "But you told me once--the first time we ever talked together," she added, looking in his eyes--"something about your keeping your things like a squirrel in a tree. Could we not go there? Is there not room for us to sit and talk without being browbeaten and looked down upon by these supercilious trees?" "It's too far away," said Low truthfully, but with a somewhat pronounced emphasis, "much too far for you just now; and it lies on another trail that enters the wood beyond. But come, I will show you a spring known only to myself, the wood ducks, and the squirrels. I discovered it the first day I saw you, and gave it your name. But you shall christen it yourself. It will be all yours, and yours alone, for it is so hidden and secluded that I defy any feet but my own or whoso shall keep step with mine to find it. Shall that foot be yours, Nellie?" Her face beamed with a bright assent. "It may be difficult to track it from here," he said, "but stand where you are a moment, and don't move, rustle, nor agitate the air in any way. The woods are still now." He turned at right angles with the trail, moved a few paces into the ferns and underbrush, and then stopped with his finger on his lips. For an instant both remained motionless; then, with his intent face bent forward and both arms extended, he began to sink slowly upon one knee and one side, inclining his body with a gentle, perfectly-graduated movement until his ear almost touched the ground. Nellie watched his graceful figure breathlessly, until, like a bow unbent, he stood suddenly erect again, and beckoned to her without changing the direction of his face. "What is it?" she asked eagerly. "All right; I have found it," he continued, moving forward without turning his head.