s she sat whittling a stick of
which she said she meant to make a cane--a staff for mountain climbing.

"Where do you intend climbing?" he asked.

She waved the stick toward the hill back of them, the first step of the
mountain.

"It is only a few hours since I picked you up down there, looking as if
you were dead," he said, impatiently; "and you know you are not fit to
tramp."

"Well, I'm not dead yet, anyway," she answered, with a shrug of her
shoulders; "and as I'm going to break away from this camp about to-morrow,
I thought I'd like to see a bit of the woods first."

"You--are going--to-morrow?"

"I reckon so."

"'Tana! And you have not said a word to me of it? That was not very
friendly, little girl."

She did not reply, but bent her head low over her work.

After observing her for a while in silence, he arose and put on his hat.

"Here is my knife," he remarked. "You had better use it, if you are
determined to haggle at that stick. Your own knife is too dull for any
use. You can leave it here in the cabin when you are done with it."

She accepted it without a word, but flushed red when he had gone, and she
found the eyes of Harris regarding her sadly.

"'Not very friendly,'" she said, going over Overton's words--"you think
that, too--don't you? You think I'm ugly, and saucy, and awful, I know!
You look scoldings at me; but if you knew all, maybe you wouldn't--if you
knew that my heart is just about breaking. I'm going out where there is no
one to talk to, or I'll be crying next."

The two cousins and the captain were in 'Tana's cabin. Mrs. Huzzard was
determined that Miss Slocum and the captain should become acquainted, and,
getting sight of the girl, who was walking alone across the level, she at
once followed her, thinking that the two left behind would perhaps become
more social if left entirely to themselves. And they did; that is, they
talked, and the captain spoke first.

"So you--you bear a grudge--don't you, Lavina?"

"Well, I guess if I owed you a very heavy one, I've got a good chance to
pay it off now," she remarked, grimly.

He twirled his hat in a dejected way, and did not speak.

"You an officer in the Union Army?" she continued, derisively. "You a
pattern of what a gentleman should be; you to set up as superior to these
rough-handed miners; you to act as if this Government owes you a pension!
Why, how would it be with you, Alf Leek, if I'd tell this camp the truth
of how you we