seem ter be in no tormentin'
haste."

O'Keefe thought that "tormentin' haste" in his position would be fatal
and yet the streak of whimsey that ran through him brought a
paradoxical answer.

"My hearth's cold over thar. I come ter borry fire."

He was watching her as he spoke, and now that he no longer stood under
the disadvantage of comparison with Jack Halloway he was no mean figure
of a man. One could not miss the fine, if slender, power of his long
and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair
curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of
grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure
whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his
mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a
quainter custom. It had to do with that isolated life in a land where
until recently matches were rare and when the hearth fire died one had
to go to the neighbor's house and hasten back with a flaming fagot for
its relighting.

"Ye don't seem ter hev ther drive of a man borryin' fire. Why didn't
ye ask Joe. I heers him in thar."

"Hit's _goin' home_ not _comin'_ thet a man's got ter hasten with his
fire," he reminded her. "I didn't ask Joe because--he hain't got ther
kind of fire my heart needs, Alexander."

So her suspicion was true! He had been speaking, not literally, but in
the allegory of a suitor and her gathering wrath burst.

"Then I hain't got hit fer ye nuther. Let yore h'arth stay cold, an'
be damned ter ye--an' now begone right speedily!"

With pure effrontery the young man laughed. Into his voice he put a
pretense of appeal, as he calmly stuffed his pipe with tobacco crumbs.
"Alexander ye wouldn't deny a man such a plum needcessity es fire,
would ye?" he questioned, though even as he said it he drew from his
pocket a box of matches and struck one.

So he had made deliberate and calculated sport of her! Her anger saw
in his presence itself only the insult of the first attack from those
men who "would not be turned back," and once more the rage in her came
to its boiling-point.

She wheeled and went into the house and when she came out her face was
pale to the lips and her brows drawn in a resolute pucker, while in her
hands she carried a cocked rifle.

"Down yonder lays my fence-line," she autocratically told the man who
had continued standing where she had left him, and whose seeming was
stil