"You say you love me tenderly. That is a lie, John Drogue--it being All Fools' Day. So you shall vow, instead, that you hate me. Come, then!" "I hate you!" said I, licking the snow from my lips. "Passionately?" I looked up at her where deep in the snow, under the lilacs, I lay, my arms spread and her two hands pinning my wrists. She was flushed with laughter and I saw the devils o' mischief watching me deep in her dark eyes. "It was under these lilacs," said I, "that I had my first hurt of you. You should heal that hurt now." That confused her, and she blushed and swore to punish me for that fling; but I grinned at her. "Come," said I, "heal me of my ancient wound as you dealt it me--with your lips!" "I did not kiss Steve Watts!" "But he kissed you. So do the like by me and I forgive you all." "All?" "Everything." "Even what I have now done?" "Even that." "And you will not truss me up to chasten me when you go free? For it would shame me and I could not endure it." "I promise." She looked down at me, smiling, uncertain. "What will you do to me if I do not?" she asked. "Drown you in snow three times every day." "And I needs must kiss you to buy my safety?" "Yes, and with hearty good will, too." She glanced hastily around, perhaps to seek an avenue for escape, perhaps to see who might spy us. Then, looking down at me, a-blush now, yet laughing, she bent her head slowly, very slowly to mine, and rested her lips on mine. Then she was up and off like a young tree-lynx, fleeing, stumbling on her pattens; but, like a white hare, I lay very still in my form, unstirring, gazing up into the bluest, softest sky that my dazzled eyes ever had unclosed upon. There was a faint fragrance in the air. It may have been arbutus--or the trace of her lips on mine. In my ears trilled the pretty melody of a million little snow rills running in the sunshine. I heard the gay cock-crow from the yard, the restless lowing of cattle, the distant caw of a crow flying high over the Drowned Lands. When at last I got to my feet a strange, new soberness had come over me, stilling exhilaration, quieting the rough and boyish spirits which had possessed me. Penelope, hanging out linen to sweeten, looked at me over her shoulder, plainly uncertain concerning me. But I kept my word and did not offer to molest her, and so went about my cooper's work again, where Nick also squatted, matching bucket staves, whilst I fell to shaping sap-pans. It was very still there in the sunshine. And, as I sat there, it seemed to me that I was putting more behind me than the icy and unsullied months of winter,--and that I should never be a boy any more, with a boy's passionless and untroubled soul. * * * * * And so came spring upon us in the Northland that fateful year of '77, with blue skies and melting snow and the cock's clarion sounding clear.