re trying out that year--delayed pass first and then the back passed
to me. I jogged Bill Graham and he stumbled down the field just
bull-headed--he never did have much football sense. I looked down
toward the goal"--(Bertram had been gesticulating wildly; now he gave
the outstretched fingers of his right hand a sudden fillip to show the
changed direction of his glance) "and I saw a clear field right
straight to the fullback or glory--"

"Gracious! What happened?" asked Kate. She was capable, wit and social
strategist that she was, of assuming all this interest by way of
leading an inept youth to make a fool and a braggart of himself for
her amusement. But she showed not a glimmer of irony, neither in her
mouth nor in her green-grey eyes. She spoke with the straight, sincere
interest of a dairymaid listening to the self-told heroisms of a
stable boy.

"Stuffy tumbled all over himself and dropped the ball!"

Bertram's answer conveyed all the tragedy in the world.

They were come now to a place where the trail ran steep and the
redwoods thickened to make a Californian hillside. It was November,
but the season was late. The earth was washed bright by the early
rains and not yet sodden with the later ones. The black, shaded loam,
bare of grass, oozed the moisture it was saving for its evergreen
redwoods against a rainless summer. In the dark clefts grew scentless
things of a delicate, gnome aspect--gold-back fern, maiden-hair
overlying dank, cold pools, sorrel, six-foot brake. No blossoms blew
among all this greenery; only by that sign and by the wet, perspiring
earth might one know that it was autumn on those hills.

The clean ooze and dew started a little stream which ran, choked with
maiden-hair, to the trail, and formed a pool. Some philanthropic
camper had driven a nail into the rock and hung there a tin cup. Kate
(Bertram still talking and gesticulating at her left) threw a
perceptive glance.

"How good the water looks!" she said. "I believe I am thirsty!"

While he filled the cup, she seated herself on the rock, disposed
herself into a composition; and after they had both drunk, she showed
no disposition to move from her perch. In fact, she loosened her brown
student beri, shook her hair free, and sat there, a wood-nymph framed
by the ruddy brown and dark green of redwood and laurel. He crouched
his big frame down beside her, so that she leaned back against the
rock. A long silence, and:

"Nature is mighty