ed wooden sidewalk. "I'm afraid it
won't fit. I feel as if I'd been scared out o' ten years' growth."

IV.

As they drove home in the chill, yellow evening, Idy turned to her
lover, and asked abruptly,--

"Who was that felluh?"

"What felluh?"

"The young felluh with the sandy _mus_tache, the one that stopped the
team."

Parker's manner had been evasive from the first, but at this the
evasiveness became a highly concentrated unconcern. He looked across the
lake, and essayed a yawn with feeble success.

"There was a good many standin' around when I got there. What sort o'
lookin' felluh was he?"

"I just told ye; with a sandy mustache, short, and middlin' heavy set."

"Sh-h-h!" said Parker, reaching for his gun. Idy stopped the horses.

A bronze ibis arose from the tules at the water's edge, and flapped
slowly westward, its pointed wings and hanging feet dripping with the
gold of the sunset. Parker laid down his gun.

"What did you want to shoot at that thing fer?" asked Idy. "They ain't
fit to eat."

"The wings is pretty. I thought you might like another feather in your
cap."

The girl gave him a look of radiant contempt, and he spoke again
hurriedly, anxious to prevent a relapse in the conversation.

"You was sayin' somethin' to-day about signin' the pledge, Idy: I've
been layin' off to sign the pledge this good while. The next time
there's a meetin' of the W. X. Y. Z. women, you fetch on one o' their
pledges, an' I'll put my fist to it."

"W. C. T. U.," corrected Idy, with emphasis.

"All right; W. C. T. me, if that suits you any better. It's a long time
since I learned my letters, an' I get 'em mixed. But I've made up my
mind on the teetotal business, and don't ye forget it."

"There ain't any danger of _me_ forgettin' it," said the young woman
significantly. "What ye goin' to do about that other business?" she
added, turning her wide eyes upon him abruptly--"about gettin' even with
that cheatin' Barden?"

They had driven into the purple shadow of the mountains, and Parker
seemed to have left his enthusiasm behind him with the sunlight.

"I don't know," he said gloomily. "Do ye want me to kill 'im?"

"_Kill_ him!" sneered the girl; "I want ye _to get even with 'im_!
'Tain't no great trick to kill a man; any fool can do that. I want ye to
get ahead of 'im!"

She glowed upon him in angry magnificence.

"Idy," said her lover, sidling toward her tenderly, "when you flare up
that a-way, you