He had evidently been hunting; his mare, with a newly killed deer laid athwart the saddle, awaited him on the bank; he had thrown the reins over a bough of a cucumber-tree. As Marcella glanced thither, she noted that the cones on the green branches were glowing red, and that the coat of the deer, whose antlers and ghastly cut throat were visible as the creature lay on its side, had already changed from the fulvous tints of summer to the duller gray of autumn; the season was surely waning. Her eyes came back reluctantly to Jepson. He was booted and spurred; he carried his rifle; his hunting-knife was in his broad leather belt; he wore his shot-pouch and powder-horn strapped over the shoulder of his brown jeans coat; his broad wool hat was pushed far back from his face, and once more she noticed how calm and reposeful his expression was. Somehow it added rancor to her anger, for she felt it hard that he should be at ease while she was so racked with care. “I dunno ez I hev enny call ter tell ye how he be. Ef it hadn’t been fur you-uns, he’d be powerful hearty an’ well. Mighty few folks in the Cove ez survigrous ez he’d be, ef ’twarn’t fur you-uns.” He looked reproachfully at her. Then with an effort to mollify her, “Ye air mighty hard on me, Marcelly.” She held her head up, relishing her cruelty. “Not half ez hard ez ye desarve,” she declared. He sighed heavily as he looked at her, and she smiled, with satire glancing in her eyes. “I ain’t half ez hard ez ye desarve, or ez I would like ter be,” she reiterated. “I dunno how ter be no harder, or I would.” “Marcelly!” he remonstrated. “’Twarn’t my fault. Ye ’low I would hev done sech a purpose? Even s’pose I war jes’ mean, look how it hev turned out fur me. I hed ’lowed, ef it hedn’t happened, ez ye an’ me mought marry some day. An’ now ye can’t abide me.” “I never could!” she retorted. He flushed with a sudden sense of mortification, but his store of patience was very great in this emergency—he, who could usually command so little. “Ye didn’t useter show it so plain,” he argued. “Why,” she protested with a cavalier air. “I ain’t ondertakin’ ter drive off all the folks ez kem constant to the cabin. How’d I know ye warn’t kemin’ ter see _Is’bel_, or—_granny_?” This mocking fleer wounded him,—so sensitive he was where she was concerned,—and he was reminded afresh of the number of sturdy worshipers at that shrine, and his jealousy sprang up anew. He stood staring silently at her, noting again how beautiful she was, canvassing secretly the claims of the others; but however his hope might belittle their chances, they all were more fortunate than he in having at least the toleration of the fair prize. She resented that long, reflective gaze, and broke forth suddenly. “Air ye obligated ennywise ter stan’ in the middle o’ this narrer bredge all evenin’?” she demanded, with a flushing cheek and a flashing eye. “An’ whyn’t ye stay up in the mounting an’ kem down no mo’, ez I bid ye?”