"I would not possess happiness even though I had this nice supper, if I was alone in this great forest, Your Excellency; I would have fear," I answered him with a small laugh as I took my corduroy knees into my embrace and looked off into that distant valley below us which was beginning to glow with stars of home lights. "Didn't I tell you once that you don't count, that you are just myself, youngster? You ought not to know I am here. I don't know you exist except as a form of pleasure of which I do not ask the reason," was the answer that my Gouverneur Faulkner made to me. "I excuse myself away with humbleness for impertinence, Your Excellency," I returned to him. "If you tried, do you think you could call me Bill, just for to-night, boy?" was the answer he made to my excuses as he puffed a beautiful ring of smoke at me. "I could not," I answered with an indignation. "I heard you call Sue Tomlinson 'Sue' the first night you danced with her." "But that Mademoiselle Sue is a woman, my Gouverneur Faulkner," I answered with haste. "That's the reason that women get at us to do us, youngster; we don't approach them as human to human but we go up on their blind side and they come back at us in the dark with a knife." And as he spoke all of the gayness of joy was lost from the voice of my beloved Gouverneur and in its place was a bitterness. "With pardon I say that it is not a truth of all women, Your Excellency," I answered with pride as my head went up high at his condemnation of the sex of which I was one. "You don't know what you are talking about, youngster. They all think I am cold and pass me along, except a few experienced ladies who--shall I say?--adventure for graft with me. I've been too busy really to love or let love but I know 'em and you don't. Let's stop talking about what concerns neither of us and go to bed. See this young cedar tree? I'm going to throw my blanket across it and with these extra boughs I'll make a genuine cradle for each of us on the opposite sides of the trunk. Then we'll cover with your blanket and be as comfortable as two middies in their hammocks in a man of war. This is a piece of woodcraft of my own invention and I'm proud of it, old scout." And while he talked my Gouverneur Faulkner had prepared those cradles of our blankets unstrapped from the saddles of the horses at feeding time, seated himself upon the edge of one of them and began to pull from his feet his riding boots. "Take off your boots and your coat, youngster, and turn in. I'll take the windward side and you can bivouac against the fire. Good night!" As he finished speaking my Gouverneur Faulkner rolled beneath that blanket upon the outer edge and left for me the hammock next to the fire, sheltered from a cool wind that had begun to come up from the valley.