incongruity of her expression, and its utter irreconcilability with his conclusion. He had been prepared to be embarrassed, being—to use his own phrase—“bashfuller ’n ennybody.” But in all his experience he had never known so awkward and unhappy an interval as when he paused beside her, after the succinct exchange of salutation, “Howdy.” She looked calmly forward, and as he stood by the tree, with one hand upon a branch that seemed to come out in a neighborly way and give him something to lean upon, at all events, he gazed searchingly down at her, then blankly at the sun-flecked woods, then once more bent his earnest eyes upon her. “Been a-huntin’ aigs?” was the scanty result of all this cogitation, as he indicated the basket of eggs. Marcella nodded assent. Then, after a silence she demanded, “Enny objection?” Even Clem could not fail to observe the flash of laughter in her eyes, but it did not serve to render him more comfortable. “Naw’m,—naw’m,” he said, with propitiating precipitation. A long pause ensued. Marcella, despite her own deliberate methods of conversation, found these intervals of irksome duration, and was moved to make a remark. “I hev been huntin’ guinea-hens’ aigs. They hide ’em so fur off, in sech out’n-the-way places, but I fund a right smart chance of ’em.” She looked down with satisfaction into her basket at the dull cream-colored trophies, captured from the fowls, whose old vagrant instinct so long survives domestication. “I fund twelve in one nest. I hev got a whole passel o’ guineas.” “_Yes_-sum!” said Clem, eagerly awaiting a pause that he might interject this earnestly acquiescent formula. For all his bashfulness, he scarcely withdrew his eyes from her face. His manner, too, was sufficiently assured, but in every word he manifested his reverent humility, and his timidity, and his earnest repudiation of any sentiment or opinion, however dear, that might not coincide with hers. He would have found it hard, so beset was he by doubt and fear, to put his fate to the test at any time. But to go through all the decorous preliminaries of asking her hand and heart, without disclosing that he had been prompted by the encouragement which he had had from Andy Longwood’s report, was beginning to seem inconceivably hazardous to a transparent soul, who had never hidden an emotion in his life, or known a secret that he did not tell. He was wrestling with the anxiety of the consciousness of her preference and the necessity to make her suppose he knew nothing of it, when she suddenly spoke again. The mention of the guinea-hens reminded her of their donor, and of her ruse to take his weapon that he might do no harm. “Hev ye seen Andy Longwood ter-day?” she asked casually, seeking to know how far she had been successful.