"I'm awful glad to see you eat, Mr. John Logan," says Stumps; "I wish there was more, I do," and he rocks on his foot and wags his head from shoulder to shoulder gleefully. "It ain't much--it ain't much, Mr. John Logan; but it is all there is." "All there is, and they were eating it." The man says this aside to himself, and he hides his face for a moment, as if he would conceal a tear. Then, after a time he seems to recover himself, and he lays the bread down on the table, tenderly, silently, carefully indeed, as if it were the most delicate and precious thing on earth. Then, lifting his face, looks at them with an effort to be cheerful, and says: "I--I forgot; I--I am not hungry. I have had my dinner. I--I, oh yes; I have been eating a great deal. Oh, no, no, no; I'm not hungry--not hungry!" As the man says this he rises and stands between the others at the fire. He puts his hands over their heads, and looks alternately in their uplifted faces. There is a long silence. "Carrie, they have tied a dog to that door, over yonder." "There is no dog tied to this door, John Logan." Low and tender with love, yet very firm and earnest is her voice. And her eyes are lifted to his. He looks down into her soul, and there is an understanding between them. There is a conversation of the eyes too refined for words; too subtle, too sweet, too swift for words. They stand together but a moment there, soul flowing into soul and tiding forth, and to and fro; but it was as if they had talked together for hours. He leans his head, kisses her lifted and unresisting lips, and says, "God bless you," and that is all. It is her first kiss, the imprint, the mint-mark on this virgin gold. This maiden of a moment since, is a woman now. "Do you know that they are after you?" The girl says this in a sort of wild whisper, as she looks toward the door. "Do I know that they are after me? Father in Heaven, who should know it better than I?" The man throws up his arms, and totters back and falls into a seat from very weakness. "Do I know that they are after me? For more than half a year I have fled; night and day, and day and night I have fled, hidden away; starting up at midnight from down among the cattle, where I had crept to keep warm; and then on, on and on, out into the snow, the storm, over the frozen ground, to the deep canyon and dark woods, where, naked and bleeding, I disputed with the bear for his bed in the hollow tree." The boy springs to the door. Is it the storm that is tugging and rattling at the latch? But the girl seems to see, to heed, to hear only John Logan. She clutches his hand in both her own and covers it with kisses and with tears. "John Logan, I pity you! I--I--" she had almost said, "I love you."