ou're_ thinkin' of stayin' the
night?"

"The Lord knows _only_." And here yesterday's adventurer had a sudden
vision of himself setting forth on his journey to be alone with nature.
On the morning of the second day he had been almost caught in a trap of
his own setting, and now at nightfall was probably in a worse fix. "I
had been thinkin', though, of spendin' the night somewhere peaceful-like
in the woods," he growled.

The girl clapped her hands together and, yawning, drew closer to her
new friend, almost as if she meant to rest her head upon his shoulder.

"Then let me stay with you, please," she begged, and Ambrose could feel
her warm breath on his cheek. "The woods is big and there's plenty of
room for me, too. I shan't be afraid with you, and I've never seen the
stars, except through the window."

The boy rose. "No," he said harshly, "you can't stay alone in the woods
at night with me. I reckon before this I understood you didn't know
nothing."

Half an hour afterward they found old Liza cropping grass, a little off
the main road where they had left her. When both of them had returned to
the gig Ambrose drove on in silence with an uncommonly bored face.

Later the moon went behind a cloud and a light mist fell, and then the
girl's body began swaying gently backward and forward. Once she fell too
far forward, when, still frowning, her companion slipped an arm about
her, and a moment later she was fast asleep with her head resting on his
shoulder.

Ambrose breathed deeply of the odour of the fresh wet earth. It was
like the perfume of her young body; the moist curls about her face like
the damp tendrils of new vines. Soon the boy's shoulder ached, and his
entire left side, including his leg, seemed to have gone to sleep. Now
and then he wondered if it ever should wake again in this world; and yet
try as he might Ambrose Thompson could not make up his mind that he
actually disliked the presence of the girl with him, and never from
youth to old age had he the talent for deceiving himself.

"Poor kid," he murmured more than once, "she must 'a' been lyin' awake
nights plannin' to run away, with no place on God's earth to run to."

Seldom did he allow himself the pleasure of looking long at her, and
only once did his lips move toward hers, and then, though his face
worked, they were drawn sharply back.

"Lord!" he whispered after this, "whatever shall I do with her?" A
stranger in that part of the country him