esumed steadily, "that her conduct, good or bad,
doesn't touch you. If it did, it'd be the same to me. I ask you to take
me for your husband. Just reflect on what your father said, Rhoda."

The horrible utterance her father's lips had been guilty of flashed
through her, filling her with mastering vindictiveness, now that she had
a victim.

"Yes! I'm to take a husband to remind me of what he said."

Robert eyed her sharpened mouth admiringly; her defence of her sister had
excited his esteem, wilfully though she rebutted his straightforward
earnestness and he had a feeling also for the easy turns of her neck, and
the confident poise of her figure.

"Ha! well!" he interjected, with his eyebrows queerly raised, so that she
could make nothing of his look. It seemed half maniacal, it was so ridged
with bright eagerness.

"By heaven! the task of taming you--that's the blessing I'd beg for in my
prayers! Though you were as wild as a cat of the woods, by heaven! I'd
rather have the taming of you than go about with a leash of quiet"--he
checked himself--"companions."

Such was the sudden roll of his tongue, that she was lost in the
astounding lead he had taken, and stared.

"You're the beauty to my taste, and devil is what I want in a woman! I
can make something out of a girl with a temper like yours. You don't know
me, Miss Rhoda. I'm what you reckon a good young man. Isn't that it?"

Robert drew up with a very hard smile.

"I would to God I were! Mind, I feel for you about your sister. I like
you the better for holding to her through thick and thin. But my
sheepishness has gone, and I tell you I'll have you whether you will or
no. I can help you and you can help me. I've lived here as if I had no
more fire in me than old Gammon snoring on his pillow up aloft; and who
kept me to it? Did you see I never touched liquor? What did you guess
from that?--that I was a mild sort of fellow? So I am: but I haven't got
that reputation in other parts. Your father 'd like me to marry you, and
I'm ready. Who kept me to work, so that I might learn to farm, and be a
man, and be able to take a wife? I came here--I'll tell you how. I was a
useless dog. I ran from home and served as a trooper. An old aunt of mine
left me a little money, which just woke me up and gave me a lift of what
conscience I had, and I bought myself out.

"I chanced to see your father's advertisement--came, looked at you all,
and liked you--brought my traps and se