ald at length began again. "It is like this,
Miss Warriner. I used to know how to behave politely to a lady. But for
six years I've lived in wildernesses--in railroad camps--from Canada to
Mexico. We've had no ladies in these rough places--no women, except once
in a while some mannish washerwoman or cook. That's what makes you so
rare--so unexpected--that is why it would be a delight to be a patrolman
outside your quarters--that is why I don't wish to go away."

"Oh!--oh! I am interesting because I am the only specimen of my sex at
Overlook. That isn't a doubtful compliment; it is no compliment at all.
Good-night."

"You misconstrue me altogether. I mean----"

"I am sure you do not mean," and now the tone was pleadingly serious,
"to remain here at my window after I request you to go away. I am, as
you have said, the only girl at Overlook."

"If there were a thousand girls at Overlook----"

"Not one of them, I trust, would prolong a dialogue with a young
gentleman at night through the open window of her bedroom."

Half in respectful deference to Mary's unassailable statement of the
rule of propriety applicable to the situation, and half in inconsiderate
petulance at being dismissed, Gerald let go of the sash with an impulse
that almost closed it. This time two miniature hands came out under the
swinging frame. Would more than one hand have been naturally used? Was
it not an awkward method of shutting a window? And Mary Warriner was not
a clumsy creature. But there were the hands, and Gerald grasped them.
They fluttered for freedom, like birds held captive in broad palms by
completely caging fingers. Then he uncovered them, but for an instant
kept them prisoners by encircling the wrists long enough to impetuously
kiss them. Another second and they were gone, the window was closed, and
they were alone.

He walked slowly away, accusing himself of folly and ungentlemanliness,
and he felt better upon getting out of the clear, searching moonshine
into the dim, obscuring shade of rocks and trees, among which the path
wound crookedly. There rapid footsteps startled him, as though he was a
skulking evildoer, and the swift approach of a man along an intersecting
pathway, made him feel like taking to cowardly flight. But he recognized
the monomaniac, Eph, who was in a breathless tremor.

"Mr. Heath, could a man walk to Dimmersville before the telegraph
station there opens in the morning?" Eph asked, with several catches of