rly spring which was bursting
into a budding and a flowering under the feet of our horses and above
our heads in the trees, it was the woman Roberta that rode at the side
of my Gouverneur Faulkner, with her heart at an ache under her coat of
a man. It was with a difficulty that I forced my eyes to meet and make
answer to the merriment and joy of the woods in his deep ones; and I
was of a great gladness when the descending of the sun brought a
moon-silvered twilight down upon us from the young green branches of
the large trees of the forest through which we rode.

"Time to make camp. We've got to old Jutting Rock. You are halfway up
between heaven and earth, youngster," said my Gouverneur Faulkner as
he drew to a halt his horse in front of me and pointed down into the
dim valley that lay at our feet.

"I am glad that we have made this Camp Heaven," I answered to him as I
slid from my horse, ungirthed him, and drew from his back the heavy
saddle he had worn for the day, as I had been taught by my father to
do after a day's hunting, if no grooms came immediately. "Is it that
you have hunger, my Gouverneur Faulkner?"

"Only about ten pounds of food craving," he made answer to me with a
large laugh that was the first I had ever heard him to give forth.
"I'll rustle the fire and water if you'll open the food wallet and
feed the horses."

"Immediately I will do all of that," I made an answer to him and
because of the happiness of that laugh he had given forth, a gladness
rose in my heart that made me again that merry boy Robert.

And it was with a great industry for a short hour that we prepared the
Camp Heaven for a sojourn of a night. Upon a very nice hot fire I put
good bacon to cook and my Gouverneur set also the pot of coffee upon
the coals. Then, while I made crisp with the heat the brown corn
pones, with which that Granny Bell had provided us, he brought a large
armful of a very fragrant kind of tree and threw it not far into the
shadow of the great tree which was the roof to our Camp Heaven.

"Bed," he said as he came and stood beside the fire in a large
towering over me. I dropped beyond rescue a fragment of that corn
bread into the extreme heat of the coals, but I said with a great
composure and a briefness like unto his words:

"Supper."

"Why is it that a man thinks he wants more of life's goods than
fatigue, supper and bed, do you suppose, boy?" questioned my
Gouverneur Faulkner to me as at last in reple