story, and when I repeated the "love him"
message, he seemed to grow a foot taller and his eyes glowed.

"I'm holding out all right," he said. "I'm fit physically. But the thing
that gets my goat is that I'm to come out clothed. Dorothea's father
says that primitive man, with nothing but his hands and perhaps a stone
club, fed himself, made himself a shelter, and clothed himself in skins.
Skins! I'm so big that two or three bears would hardly be enough. I did
find a hole that I thought a bear or two might fall into, and got almost
stung to death robbing a bee tree to bait the thing with honey. But
there aren't any bears, and if there were how'd I kill 'em? Wait until
they starve to death?"

"Rabbits!" said Tish.

He looked down at himself and he seemed very large in the firelight.
"Dear lady," he said, "there aren't enough rabbits in the county to
cover me, and how'd I put 'em together? I was a fool to undertake the
thing, that's all."

"But aren't you in love with her?" asked Aggie.

"Well, I guess I am. It isn't that, you know. I'm a good bit worse than
crazy about her. A man might be crazy about a mint julep or a power
boat, but--he'd hardly go into the woods in his skin and live on fish
until he's scaly for either of them. If I don't get her, I don't want to
live. That's all."

He looked so gloomy and savage that we saw he meant it, and Aggie was
perceptibly thrilled. Trish, however, was thinking hard, her eyes on the
leech. "Was there anything in the agreement to prevent your accepting
any suggestions?"

He pondered. "No, I was to be given no food, drink, shelter, or any
weapon. The old man forgot fire--that's how I came to beg some."

"Fire and brains," reflected Tish. "We've given you the first and we've
plenty of the second to offer. Now, young man, this is my plan. We'll
give you nothing but suggestions. If now and then you find a cooked meal
under that tree, that's accident, not design, and you'd better eat it.
Can you sew?"

"I'm like the Irishman and the fiddle--I never tried, but I guess I
can." He was much more cheerful.

"Do you have to be alone?"

"I believe he took that for granted, in this costume."

"Will it take you long to move over here?"

"I think I can move without a van," he said, grinning. "My sole worldly
possessions are a stone hatchet and a hairpin fishhook."

"Get them and come over," commanded Tish. "When you leave this forest at
the end of the time you are going to be f