"Why, what do you know about that!" cried Marion abruptly, bringing her hands together animatedly. "All that's left of my opera fudge that one of the girls sent me!" She took the paper and glanced at it ruefully. "I remember now--that was the time Fred was sure he'd get a--" she stopped herself and looked at him archly--"a jack-rabbit. And I said I'd come out and help him carry it home. But he didn't have any luck at all--why, of course, I remember! Meeting the professor with the mail, and bringing the candy along to eat if we got hungry--and we did too. And Fred hid behind the tree and scared me--why, Mr. Brown, I think you're perfectly wonderful, to figure that all out just from the tracks! I should think you'd be a detective. I'm sure there isn't a detective in the country that could beat you--really, they are stupid alongside of such work as this. But I hope the tracks won't tell you what Fred said about not getting the--er--the rabbit he shot at!" She laughed up into his face. "You might tell," she accused him playfully, "and get us all into trouble. I'm awfully afraid of you, Mr. Brown. I am really." Hank Brown could read tracks fairly well, but he could not read women at all. His puzzled gaze went from Marion's laughing face to the tracks in the snow; from there to the paper in his hand; to the tree, and back again to her face. "The man's tracks went back towards Taylor Rock," he drawled out half apologetically. "That's what made me kinda think maybe--" "Oh, you know that, too! You know how he said he was going up there and see if he couldn't run across a bear before sundown, and for me to go straight home. And I'll bet," she added breathlessly, "you can tell me exactly where it was that Kate waited for me across the gulley, and which ankle it was that she sprained so I had to almost carry her back to the house, and--why, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if you could tell me what I put on it!" "No," Hank confessed feebly, "I guess I couldn't just figure all that out, not offhand like." "But you knew about Fred forgetting his cigarettes, and about my bringing him some so he wouldn't be grouchy all the way home," Marion reminded him demurely. "I--I do think you are the cleverest boy!" That finished Hank. Never within his recollection had a young woman so much as hinted that she thought him wonderful or clever. Besides, Hank was well past thirty, and it tickles a man of that age to be called a boy. He began to leer at her with amorous eyes when he spoke, and he began to find frequent occasions for taking hold of her arm. He managed to make himself odious in the extreme, so that in sheer self-defense Marion made haste to bring his thoughts back to Jack. "Did you say that lookout man has a claim up here somewhere?" She started back to the road, Hank keeping close to her heels.