r! I'll let her see a Sturtevant is as good as a Maitland
any day! I ain't vain. She sha'n't say it. I have got nice eyes, folks
all say so, and it's easier to talk with them than with my crooked old
tongue. But I'll conquer it. I will. Then I'll show her what kind of a
girl she is to dare--"

To dare what?

In all his previous ignominy there was naught compared with this. For
here was Kate, remorseful, warm-hearted Kate, who never meant to give a
single creature pain, yet was forever doing it, Kate--down upon her
knees clasping Monty's neck with her arms, kissing and beseeching him
"not to mind," exactly as she would have kissed the smallest of all the
Snowballs, and not resenting it in the least because he did not
instantly respond to her entreaties.

Respond?

For the space of several seconds it seemed to the lad that his head was
whirling on his shoulders like a top. Then, with all the rudeness of
his greater strength, he flung the demonstrative girl aside and rushed
from the house. One idea alone was clear in his troubled brain: that he
must get away from everything feminine and go where there were "men."
The fishing-pool. Uncle Moses and the boys. The thought of them was
refreshment, and put all other thoughts, of disobedience and its like,
far from him. Striking out boldly, yet half-blindly through the dim
light, he crossed Miss Maitland's orchard, took a short cut by way of
the great forest--which he nor no other Marsden lad would ordinarily
have entered alone after nightfall--on past the "deserted cottage" in
the very heart of the wood, and then--oblivion.

CHAPTER IV.

FOXES' GULLY

When next Montgomery opened his eyes his head lay on something soft, and
he confusedly tried to understand what and where it was. But thought
seemed difficult, and he closed his lids again, wondering what made him
feel so weak, and drowsily deciding that he must be in his own bed and
this the middle of the night.

In one thing he was correct--it was the middle of the night; a later
hour than the boy had ever been absent from home, even upon the most
prolonged of fishing-trips. Yet the softness beneath his head was not
that of a pillow in its case, but the lap of a white-frocked girl, who
was holding him tenderly and sobbing as if her heart would break.

"W-w-wh-where 'm I a-at? Who's a-c-c-cr-cry--in'?"

"Oh, you darling boy! you didn't die, did you, after all! Oh, I'm so
glad, so glad, so glad! And I thought I