ed on his hind legs,
gave a leap and went crashing through the forest snorting his
protesting fury. The doe scampered after, her white-lined tail
standing up perfectly straight.

They sat down on a log, dried and warmed by the sun in this open space,
and talked for two hours. There was no need for careful avoidance of
dangerous subjects. Clavering had come to these woods nearly every
year since he had made the north his home, and she had forgotten
nothing of her woodland lore. When one is "in the woods," as the great
Adirondacks are familiarly called, one rarely talks of anything but
their manifold offerings. It is easy enough to forget the world. They
both had had their long tramps, their rough campings-out, more or less
exciting adventures. When a loud bell, hung in a frame outside the
camp, summoned them to dinner, they walked out briskly. Once, as the
trail widened, he touched her fingers tentatively. She let her own
curl for a moment, then gave him a provocative glance over her shoulder
and hurried on.

XLVIII

Clavering, when making up his list with Mr. Dinwiddie (by courtesy),
had, with the exception of Todd, who was always the life of any party,
Gora, whom he always liked to have at hand, and Eva Darling, who was a
favorite of "The Ambassador to the Court of the Sophisticates," as Todd
had long since dubbed him, chosen his guests at random, taking whom he
could get, careful merely to ask those who, so far as he knew, were on
speaking terms.

But he hardly could have gathered together a more congenial and lively
party, nor one more delighted to leave New York for the woods. Henry
Minor, editor of one of the intellectual and faintly radical magazines,
whose style was so involved in his efforts to be both "different" and
achieve an unremitting glitter, that he had recently received a
petition to issue a glossary, was as amiable as a puppy in the society
of his friends and when in the woods talked in words of one syllable
and discovered a mighty appetite. His wife, who had demonstrated her
originality by calling herself Mrs. Minor, was what is known as a
spiffing cook and a top-notch dresser. She had, in fact, the most
charming assortment of sports clothes in the camp. Eva Darling, who
danced for pastime and illustrated for what little bread she was
permitted to eat at home, was as lively as a grasshopper and scarcely
less devastating. Babette Gold wore her black hair in smooth bands on
eit