Grant smiled bitterly. “All men are savages under the skin,” he said. “How do YOU know what I think and feel? If I fail to come through with the conventional patter, I am called an Indian--because my mother was a half-breed.” He threw up his head proudly, let his eyes rest for a moment upon the moon, swimming through a white river of clouds just over the tall poplar hedge planted long ago to shelter the orchard from the sweeping west winds; and, when he looked down at her again, he caught a glimpse of repentant tears in her eyes, and softened. “Oh, you're a girl, and you demand the usual amount of poor-pussy talk,” he told her maliciously. “So I'm sorry. I'm heartbroken. If it will help any, I'll even kiss the hurt to make it well--and I'm not a kissing young man, either, let me tell you.” “I'd die before I'd let you touch me!” Her repentance, if it was that, changed to pure rage. She snatched the torn sheet from him and turned abruptly toward the fence. He followed her, apparently unmoved by her attitude; placed his foot upon the lower wire and pressed it into the soft earth, lifted the one next above it as high as it would go, and thus made it easier for her to pass through. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as though tempted to reject even that slight favor, then stooped, and went through. As the wires snapped into place, she halted and looked back at him. “Maybe I've been mean--but you're been meaner,” she summed up, in self-justification. “I suppose the next thing you will do will be to tell the boys. Well, I don't care what you do, so long as you never speak to me again. Go and tell them if you want to--tell. TELL, do you hear? I don't want even the favor of your silence!” She dexterously tucked the bundle of white under the uninjured arm, caught the loose folds of her skirt up in her hands, and ran away up the path, not once stopping to see whether he still followed her. Grant did not follow. He stood leaning against the fence-post, and watched her until her flying form grew indistinct in the shade of the poplar hedge; watched it reappear in a broad strip of white moonlight, still running; saw it turn, slacken speed to a walk, and then lose itself in the darkness of the grove. Five minutes, ten minutes, he stood there, staring across the level bit of valley lying quiet at the foot of the jagged-rimmed bluff standing boldly up against the star-flecked sky. Then he shook himself impatiently, muttered something which had to do with a “doddering fool,” and retraced his steps quickly through the orchard, the currant bushes, and the strawberry patch, jumped the ditch, and so entered the grove and returned to his blankets. “We thought the spook had got yuh, sure.” Gene lifted his head turtlewise and laughed deprecatingly. “We was just about ready to start out after the corpse, only we didn't know but what you might get excited and take a shot at us in the dark. We heard yuh shoot--what was it? Did you find out?”