and dying out across the garden and the
trees.

A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn two
warm hands covered her eyes.

She plucked them away and stood up.

"I _wish_ you wouldn't do things like that," she cried. "How _dare_ you?"

"I couldn't help it," replied the other, "you looked so comfortable. I
didn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming across
the grass."

"I didn't--and you shouldn't have done it."

"Well, I'm sorry. There, I've apologised, make friends."

"There is nothing to make friends about," she replied stiffly. "No, I
don't want to shake hands--I'm not angry, let us go into the house."

"Don't," said Silas imploringly. "He and she are sitting over that old
album, comparing notes. I saw them through the window, that's why I came
to look for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the Governor was
gone once on Maria, years ago, but they never got married. He married my
mother instead."

Phyl forgot her resentment.

The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and Maria Pinckney had perhaps been
more than friends in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to be
dismissed as a fancy. It interested her to find Silas confirming it.

"Of course, I can't say for certain," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "I
only judge by the way they go on when they're together, and the way he
talks of her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?"

"No, I don't--ever."

"Neither do I. I hope I'll be kicked to death by a horse, or drowned or
shot before I'm forty. I don't want to die in any beds with doctors round
me. I reckon if I'm ever like that I'll drink the liniment instead of the
medicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red label
for my ticket. Sit down for a while and let's talk."

"No, I don't care to sit down."

"I won't touch you. I promise."

Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She was not afraid of Silas in
the least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; it
seemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less an
inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the point
of craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her as
he had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and his
good looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that lay
away at the back of his character and gave colour to this personality,
managed, somehow,