t child before him. Yet she was not piquant, demure, like
the girls he had met in France; not stylish and sophisticated like those
of the great cities he had visited since his return. Her garb became
her: simple, not holding the eye in itself but calling attention to the
brunette beauty of her throat and face, the warm redness of her childish
mouth, and the brown, warm color of her arms. She had dark, waving hair,
lovely to touch, wistful red lips. Because he was the woodsman, now and
always, he marked with pleasure that there was no indication of
ill-health or physical weakness about her. Her body was lithe and
strong, with the grace of the wild creatures.

It would be good to know her, and walk beside her in the tree aisles.
All manner of delectable possibilities occurred to him. But all at once
he checked his dreams with an iron will.

There must be no thought of women in his life--for now. He still had his
way to make. A few hours more would find him plunging deeper into the
forest, perhaps never to see her again. He felt an all-pervading sense
of regret.

"There's nothing I can say--to thank you," the girl was murmuring. "I
never saw anything like it; it was just as if the wolf understood every
word you said."

"Old Hiram had him pretty well trained, I suspect." The man's eyes fell
to the shaggy form at his feet. "I'm glad I happened along Miss--"

"Miss Neilson," the girl prompted him. "Beatrice Neilson. I live here."

Neilson! His mind seemed to leap and catch at the name. Just that day he
had heard it from the lips of the merchant. And this was the house next
door where dwelt his fellow traveler for the morrow.

"Then it's your father--or brother--who's going to the Yuga--"

"No," the girl answered doubtfully. "My father is already there. I'm
here alone--"

Then the gray eyes lighted and a smile broke about Ben's lips. Few times
in his life had he smiled in quite this vivid way.

"Then it's you," he exulted, "who is going to be my fellow traveler
to-morrow!"

XI

Ben found, rather as he had expected, that the girl was not at all
embarrassed by the knowledge that they were to have a lonely all-day
ride together. She looked at the matter from a perfectly natural and
wholesome point of view, and she could see nothing in it amiss or
improper. The girls of the frontier rarely feel the need of chaperones.
Their womanhood comes early, and the open places and the
fresh-life-giving air they breathe g