mantled her face. She
straightened her shoulders and glanced at her hands tenderly.

"Lord, na! Freckles," she cried. "At least, the anes ye get from people
ye love dinna. They dinna stay on the outside. They strike in until they
find the center of your heart and make their stopping-place there, and
naething can take them from ye--I doubt if even death----Na, lad, ye can
be reet sure kisses dinna wash off!"

Freckles set the basin down and muttered as he plunged his hot, tired
face into the water, "I needn't be afraid to be washing, then, for that
one struck in."

CHAPTER XI

Wherein the Butterflies Go on a Spree and Freckles Informs the Bird
Woman

"I wish," said Freckles at breakfast one morning, "that I had some way
to be sending a message to the Bird Woman. I've something at the swamp
that I'm believing never happened before, and surely she'll be wanting
it."

"What now, Freckles?" asked Mrs. Duncan.

"Why, the oddest thing you ever heard of," said Freckles; "the whole
insect tribe gone on a spree. I'm supposing it's my doings, but it all
happened by accident, like. You see, on the swale side of the line,
right against me trail, there's one of these scrub wild crabtrees. Where
the grass grows thick around it, is the finest place you ever conceived
of for snakes. Having women about has set me trying to clean out those
fellows a bit, and yesterday I noticed that tree in passing. It struck
me that it would be a good idea to be taking it out. First I thought I'd
take me hatchet and cut it down, for it ain't thicker than me upper arm.
Then I remembered how it was blooming in the spring and filling all the
air with sweetness. The coloring of the blossoms is beautiful, and I
hated to be killing it. I just cut the grass short all around it. Then
I started at the ground, trimmed up the trunk near the height of
me shoulder, and left the top spreading. That made it look so truly
ornamental that, idle like, I chips off the rough places neat, and this
morning, on me soul, it's a sight! You see, cutting off the limbs and
trimming up the trunk sets the sap running. In this hot sun it ferments
in a few hours. There isn't much room for more things to crowd on that
tree than there are, and to get drunker isn't noways possible."

"Weel, I be drawed on!" exclaimed Mrs. Duncan. "What kind of things do
ye mean, Freckles?"

"Why, just an army of black ants. Some of them are sucking away like
old topers. Some of them are se