To one who knew Kavanagh it seemed to typify his attitude toward the world. He had seen other men clutching and grabbing. He had clutched and grabbed with the best of them. When one deals with squatter claims, tax titles, forgotten land grants and other complications that tie up the public domain, it often happens that the man who waits for the right to prevail finds the more unscrupulous and impetuous rival in possession, and claiming rather more than the allowed nine points at that. So Dennis Kavanagh had played the game as the others had played it. When one looked up at the house, with its back against the woods, staring with its surly window-eyes, one saw the resoluteness of the intrenched Kavanagh put into visible form. The dogs came racing to meet Harlan. They knew him as their mistress's friend. She was sitting on the broad porch-rail when he rode up, and he swung his horse close and patted her cheek as one greets a child. She smiled wistfully at him. "Am I impudent, and all the things your grandfather said? I've been thinking it all over, Big Boy, as I was riding home." "You're only a little girl, and he talked to you as he'd talk to one of our lumber-jacks," he burst out, angrily. "It was shameful, Clare. I never saw my grandfather as he was to-day. He has used me just as shamefully." "I suppose I haven't had the bringing up a girl ought to have," she confessed. "I haven't thought much about it before. There was nothing ever happened to make me think about it. I was just Dennis Kavanagh's girl, without any mother to tell me better. I suppose it has been wrong for me to ride about with you. But you didn't have any mother and I didn't have any mother, and it--it sort of seemed to make us--I don't know how to say it, Big Boy! But it seemed to make us related--just as though I had a brother to keep me company. I suppose it has been wrong when you look at it the way girls have to look at such things." He gazed on her compassionately. A few ruthless words had broken the spell of childhood. There was shame in her eyes as she gazed up at him. He had seen the flush of youth and joy in her cheeks before--he had seen the happy color come and go as they had met and parted. But this hue that crept up over cheeks and brow made pity grow in him. "He said--but you know what he said! And it isn't true. You know it isn't true. He shamed and insulted me because I'm a girl--and can't a girl have a friend that's tender and good to her?" "A girl can," he said, gravely, "because I'm that friend, Clare. Perhaps my grandfather cannot understand. But I'll see that he does. We are to have some very serious talk together, he and I. I'm here to tell you, little girl, that I'm grateful because you sent that message into the woods to me. I'm not going to allow myself to be made a fool of in any such fashion; I'm not going to be sent to the legislature."