They turned around suddenly and stared. There on the wharf behind them stood a tall fellow not much older than Johnny, with a lean face, sharp gray eyes, and sun-bleached hair. He wore cowhide boots and a loose hunting shirt over moosehide breeches. He carried a long pole with an iron barb on the end, such as the lumbermen used to break up log jams and herd the great rafts down the river. “I’m know I’m a stranger here,” he went on, “but I ain’t poison. I been watching you awhile. I’d like a hand in the game.” “You came down river with the logs?” asked Dick slowly. The stranger nodded. “Aye, clear from the falls at Derryfield. A fellow can be lonely--away from his own town at night--first time away.” The sharpness went out of his eyes, and he looked younger, almost like a little boy. “Of course you can play,” cried Kitty, sympathy in her voice. “I’ve been lonely, too, sometimes, when I went to visit Sally Rose in Charlestown, and I know what it’s like. He can count this time, can’t he, Sally Rose?” “Of course he can,” said Sally Rose, smiling at the strange lad, flicking her lashes. Dick and Eben looked crestfallen. Johnny kicked the side of the rum keg. “Didn’t know backwoodsmen could count,” he sneered. “Tell us what your name is, if you want to play.” The stranger narrowed his eyes, then he opened them wide and smiled innocently. “My name’s Tom Trask,” he said, “and I can count.” He put his head down in the crook of his arm, but they did not hear the familiar “Ten--fifteen--twenty--” After a moment, thinking he might be counting to himself, they started to straggle away. Kitty did not watch where the others went to. Seconds mattered at a time like this. She slipped behind a row of tar barrels at the corner of the counting house and stood there, listening to the water as it sucked at the piles underneath, to the sound of singing and fiddle music where the sailors were making merry on the deck of a ship moored a hundred yards off shore. Suddenly the voice of the young logger from up the Merrimack whipped out like the command of the captain to the volunteers who drilled on Frog Pond green come muster day. “Ten--ten--double ten--forty-five--fifteen!” He reached his hundred all at once, leaped from the keg, and ran straight toward her, toward her, Kitty Greenleaf, of the High Street in Newburyport, who had never seen him before tonight. He ran to her, around the tar barrels, around the corner of the counting house. In a moment he had put his arms about her and kissed her on the mouth, kissed her hard. Not used to such sudden attack, not used to kissing any lad at all, except in kissing games where everybody looked on and laughed, or when Dick bade her a shy good night sometimes by the garden wall, she struggled, and sputtered, and pulled away. She wiped her mouth and looked up. “What--what did you do that for?” she gasped.