This seemed to him perfectly reasonable, but his distrust of her was so great at the moment that he subjected the possibility of occult motives to a searching mental scrutiny. He failed to evolve anything more plausible, or indeed anything beyond what she had said. He looked at her hard for a moment, still bitterly resenting her undimmed brightness under his displeasure, and he secretly thought she had ill chosen her time to ask of him a favor. Still maintaining his gravely offended aspect, he said, “Ye kin hev it, Marcelly, ez long ez ye want it.” He released his hold upon it, leaving it in her hand, and went his way without another word. At the gate he did not look back, but pursued the turn-row until he was half through the field. Under some impulse then which he did not seek to discriminate, he glanced over his shoulder. Marcella was standing in the path where he had left her, still gazing after him. She held the long rifle in one hand, leaning her soft cheek against its surly ramrod at one side of the barrel, her hair touching it She smiled radiantly at him through the sunshine, and called out with joyous sweetness, “Good-by, Andy.” If he said aught in response, she did not hear it. Her charming smile, intent on mollification, failed of effect; it was too much, however, to expect even of feminine tact that she should appreciate that frowns might have served better, or null seriousness, inexpressive and impenetrable. The flash of light from her eyes set a-flaring his intelligence,—a sufficiently good endowment, but lacking those traits of divination and imagination characteristic of more finely furnished brains. Without its impetus he could never have experienced an abrupt illumination concerning Marcella’s motive, which opened before him by the time he had ponderingly approached the verge of the cornfield. Its contemplation almost took his breath away. He stood motionless, staring vaguely before him, realizing why she had wanted his rifle,—how strange that he had not instantly known! Had he so soon forgotten his idle threats? He had a vivid mental picture of himself as he must have looked as he stood on the porch this morning, significantly tapping the trigger of the loaded rifle. She had not thought those threats idle! His foolish courage flared up to match the estimation in which he thought she held him. She knew him for a dangerous man!—and the blood pulsed fast through his veins as this flattering idea impelled it. She was afraid he would indeed wreak woe upon the man whom she was to marry. Her father had said that she was to marry Clem Sanders, and she had not denied it. He had unconsciously disbelieved this at the time, as one cannot at first realize a misfortune, which stuns the finer sensibilities by the weight of its fall. Only now he was beginning to appreciate what her loss meant to him; it almost unmanned him for a moment, thinking as he did that it was her solicitude for the safety of her lover that devised the clever