ith his arms full of pitchers and platters of food, and
held the girl with his admiring eyes.

"And you will let me come and see you--you and your sister and your
father? I know all about you. White has explained--everything. He--"

Nella-Rose braced herself against the table and quietly and definitely
outlined their future relations.

"No, you cannot come to see us-all. You don't know Marg. If she doesn't
find things out, there won't be trouble; when she does find things out
there's goin' t' be a right smart lot of trouble brewing!"

This was said with such comical seriousness that Truedale laughed
again, but sobered instantly when he recalled the incident of the white
bantam which Jim had so vividly portrayed.

"But you see," he replied, "I don't want to let you go after this first
party, and never see you again!"

The girl shrugged her shoulders and apparently dismissed the matter. She
sat down and, with charming abandon, began to eat. Presently Truedale,
amused and interested, spoke again:

"It would be very unkind of you not to let me see you."

"I'm--thinking!" Nella-Rose drew her brows together and nibbled a bit of
corn bread meditatively. Then--quite suddenly:

"I'm coming here!"

"You--you mean that?" Truedale flushed.

"Yes. And the big woods--you walk in them?"

"I certainly do."

"Sometimes--I am in the big woods."

"Where--specially?" Truedale was playing this new game with the foolish
skill of the novice.

"There's a Hollow--where--" (Nella-Rose paused) "where the laurel tangle
is like a jungle--"

Truedale broke in: "I know it! There's a little stream running through
it, and--trails."

"Yes!" Nella-Rose leaned back and showed her white teeth alluringly.

"I--I should not--permit this!" For a moment Truedale broke through the
thin ice of delight that was luring him to unknown danger and fell upon
the solid rock of conservatism.

"Why?" The eyes, so tenderly innocent, confronted him appealingly.
"There are nuts there and--and other things! You are just teasing;
you'll let me--show you the way about?"

The girl was all child now and made Truedale ashamed to hold her to any
absurd course that his standards acknowledged but that hers had never
conceived.

"Of course. I'll be glad to have you for a guide. Jim White has no ideas
about nuts and things--he goes to the woods to kill something; he's
there now. I dare say mere are other things in the mountains
besides--prey?"

Nella-Rose