tion he leaned back
against our giant rooftree, between two of whose hospitable large
roots we had made our repast, and lighted a pipe of great fragrance
which he had taken from his pocket.

"I would not possess happiness even though I had this nice supper, if
I was alone in this great forest, Your Excellency; I would have fear,"
I answered him with a small laugh as I took my corduroy knees into my
embrace and looked off into that distant valley below us which was
beginning to glow with stars of home lights.

"Didn't I tell you once that you don't count, that you are just
myself, youngster? You ought not to know I am here. I don't know you
exist except as a form of pleasure of which I do not ask the reason,"
was the answer that my Gouverneur Faulkner made to me.

"I excuse myself away with humbleness for impertinence, Your
Excellency," I returned to him.

"If you tried, do you think you could call me Bill, just for to-night,
boy?" was the answer he made to my excuses as he puffed a beautiful
ring of smoke at me.

"I could not," I answered with an indignation.

"I heard you call Sue Tomlinson 'Sue' the first night you danced with
her."

"But that Mademoiselle Sue is a woman, my Gouverneur Faulkner," I
answered with haste.

"That's the reason that women get at us to do us, youngster; we don't
approach them as human to human but we go up on their blind side and
they come back at us in the dark with a knife." And as he spoke all of
the gayness of joy was lost from the voice of my beloved Gouverneur
and in its place was a bitterness.

"With pardon I say that it is not a truth of all women, Your
Excellency," I answered with pride as my head went up high at his
condemnation of the sex of which I was one.

"You don't know what you are talking about, youngster. They all think
I am cold and pass me along, except a few experienced ladies
who--shall I say?--adventure for graft with me. I've been too busy
really to love or let love but I know 'em and you don't. Let's stop
talking about what concerns neither of us and go to bed. See this
young cedar tree? I'm going to throw my blanket across it and with
these extra boughs I'll make a genuine cradle for each of us on the
opposite sides of the trunk. Then we'll cover with your blanket and be
as comfortable as two middies in their hammocks in a man of war. This
is a piece of woodcraft of my own invention and I'm proud of it, old
scout."

And while he talked my Gouverneur