I wanted to know whether
she had been accustomed to such alarms; and if the gun she carried was
really a necessity. But I could only respect her reticence, and I was
turning away when I was struck by a more inexplicable spectacle. As she
neared the end of the extension I distinctly saw the tall figure of
a man, moving with a certain diffidence and hesitation that did not,
however, suggest any intention of concealment, among the trees; the girl
apparently saw him at the same moment and slightly slackened her pace.
Not more than a dozen feet separated them. He said something that was
inaudible to my ears,--but whether from his hesitation or the distance
I could not determine. There was no such uncertainty in her reply,
however, which was given in her usual curt fashion: "All right. You can
trapse along home now and turn in."

She turned the corner of the extension and disappeared. The tall figure
of the man wavered hesitatingly for a moment, and then vanished also.
But I was too much excited by curiosity to accept this unsatisfactory
conclusion, and, hastily picketing Chu Chu a few rods from the front
door, I ran after him, with an instinctive feeling that he had not gone
far. I was right. A few paces distant he had halted in the same dubious,
lingering way. "Hallo!" I said.

He turned towards me in the like awkward fashion, but with neither
astonishment nor concern.

"Come up and take a drink with me before you go," I said, "if you're not
in a hurry. I'm alone here, and since I HAVE turned out I don't see why
we mightn't have a smoke and a talk together."

"I dursn't."

I looked up at the six feet of strength before me and repeated
wonderingly, "Dare not?"

"SHE wouldn't like it." He made a movement with his right shoulder
towards the extension.

"Who?"

"Miss Karline."

"Nonsense!" I said. "She isn't in the cabin,--you won't see HER. Come
along." He hesitated, although from what I could discern of his bearded
face it was weakly smiling.

"Come."

He obeyed, following me not unlike Chu Chu, I fancied, with the same
sense of superior size and strength and a slight whitening of the eye,
as if ready to shy at any moment. At the door he "backed." Then he
entered sideways. I noticed that he cleared the doorway at the top and
the sides only by a hair's breadth.

By the light of the fire I could see that, in spite of his full first
growth of beard, he was young,--even younger than myself,--and that he
was by