as if it no longer
interested her.

"Perhaps it's a pity you helped the men who were poaching," she said.
"I'm afraid you're fond of romantic adventures."

"I'm sometimes rash and sorry afterwards," Foster admitted. "However,
there's an excuse for the other thing. This is a romantic country and
I've spent a long time in Canada, which is altogether businesslike."

Alice gave him an approving smile, but she said, "One shouldn't be
sorry afterwards. Isn't that rather weak?"

"I'm human," Foster rejoined. "A thing looks different when you come
to pay for doing it. It's pretty hard not to feel sorry then."

"After all, that may be better than counting the cost beforehand and
leaving the thing undone."

"You're a Borderer; one of the headstrong, old-fashioned kind that
broke the invasions and afterwards defied their own rulers for a whim."

"As a matter of fact, a number of them were very businesslike. They
fought for their enemies' cattle and the ransom of captured knights."

"Not always," Foster objected. "At Flodden, where the Ettrick spears
all fell in the smashed squares, the Scots king came down from his
strong camp to meet the English on equal terms. Then it wasn't
businesslike when Buccleugh, with his handful of men, carried off
Kimmont Willie from Carlisle. There was peace between the countries
and he had two offended sovereigns to hold him accountable."

"It looks as if you had been reading something about our history,"
Alice said smiling.

"I haven't read much," Foster answered modestly. "Still, we have a few
books at the mill, and in the long winter evenings, when the
thermometer marks forty degrees below and you sit close to the red-hot
stove, there's nothing to do but read. It would be hard for you to
picture our little room; the match-boarding, split by the changes from
heat to bitter cold, the smell of hot iron, the dead silence, and the
grim white desolation outside. Perhaps it's curious, but after working
hard all day, earning dollars, one can't read rubbish. One wants
romance, but romance that's real and has the truth in it."

"But your own life has been full of adventure."

"In a way, but there was always a business proposition to justify the
risk. It's good to be reckless now and then, and I've felt as I read
about your ancestors that I envied them. There must have been some
charm in riding about the moors with one's lady's glove on one's steel
cap, ready to follow where adven