njo; "she has eyes like a rabbit."

And Poindexter had added up two columns of figures and contemplated the
result some time before he asked, "Who?"

"The milkmaid,--she of the bare feet and blue calico. I have explored
the dim recesses of her sunbonnet, and am prepared to report upon the
contents. The lass is comely."

But Poindexter had relapsed into mathematics, and grunted an
unintelligible reply.

Melissa heard none of this. All that she heard was the faint, distant
strum of a banjo, and a gay young voice announcing to the rocks and
fastnesses of the canon that his love was like a red, red rose. His
love! Melissa walked along the path beside the flume in vague
bewilderment. It was his love, then, whose picture she had seen pinned
to the canvas of the tent. The lady was scantily attired, and Melissa
had a confused idea that her heightened color might arise from this
fact. She felt her own cheeks redden at the thought.

Lysander was at work in the canon some distance below the new tunnel,
"ditching" the water of Flutterwheel Spring to Mrs. Withrow's land.

"That long-legged tenderfoot thinks you're purty, M'lissy," he
announced, as he smoked his pipe on the doorstep one evening. "He come
down to the ditch this afternoon to see if I could sharpen a pick fer
'em, and he asked if you was my little dotter. I told 'im no, I was your
great-grandpap," and Lysander laughed teasingly.

Melissa was sitting on a low chair behind him, holding her newly arrived
niece in her arms. She bent over the little puckered face, her own
glowing with girlish delight. The baby stirred, and tightened its
wrinkles threateningly, and Melissa stooped to kiss the little moist
silken head.

"I--I don't even know his name," she faltered.

"Nor me, neither," said Lysander. "Poindexter calls him 'Sterling,' but
I don' know if it's his first name or his last. Anyway, he seems to be a
powerful singer."

The baby broke into a faint but rapidly strengthening wail.

"Come, now, Pareppy Rosy," said Lysander soothingly, "don't you be
jealous; your old pappy ain't a-goin' back on you as a musicianer. Give
'er to me, M'lissy."

Melissa laid the little warm, unhappy bundle in its father's arms, and
stood in the path in front of them, looking over the valley, until the
baby's cries were hushed.

"Was the pick much dull?" she asked, with a faint stirring of womanly
tact.

"Oh, yes," rejoined the unsuspecting Lysander; "they get 'em awful dull