s voice.

With an impatient gesture the doctor tossed his half-smoked cigarette
into the stream. He shrugged his shoulders, gazing absently at the
cigarette bobbing along in the current.

"You cast me off like that," he muttered gloomily, nodding to the
cigarette. "Did you notice," he added, "how it still fought to burn?"

"And how quickly it sizzled and went out when it had to?" she laughed.

Impulsively he took her hand--a hand which she did not withdraw, for
she was trembling. Slowly his face bent nearer her own, his words were
sunk to a whisper, but in his eyes there gleamed the craving of her
lips.

"Don't!" she protested, raising her free hand--"for God's sake don't!
_You shall not_!"

"I must," he answered, hotly.

"You shall not," she replied. "I should only suffer--I am unhappy
enough as it is," and she buried her face in her clenched hands, her
shoulders quivering.

Even the quiver did not evade the eyes of the man stock still beside
the hemlock; no detail of the drama that was being enacted beside the
brook escaped him. He who could observe with ease the smashing of a
moth's wing thirty rods from shore, possessed a clearness of vision
akin to that of a hawk. A bird fluttered in the underbrush near them.

"What was that?" she asked, with a guilty little start, withdrawing
her hand.

"A bird--nothing more dangerous," he laughed outright, amused at her
fright.

Holcomb's features, as he gazed at them, were like bronze. His first
thought, as he gazed out from his ambush, had been Margaret's mother!
His second thought was his dislike for Sperry. He watched half
unwillingly, with a feeling of mingled curiosity and disgust. He had
not pried upon them; it was pure chance that had brought him where he
was. At length he withdrew.

He was still thinking of the incident when he heard the brush crack
ahead of him. Then the smug face of Blakeman emerged from a thicket.
It was the butler's afternoon off, and he was out after birds. He let
down the hammers of his gun as Holcomb drew near.

"Any luck?" asked Holcomb.

The butler drew from the wide pocket of a well-worn leather hunting
coat a pair of ruffled partridges.

"Good enough!" exclaimed Holcomb.

"'Twas a bit of devil's luck," returned Blakeman, dropping into his
native brogue, which he always suppressed in service. "Both birds
jumped back of me, but I got 'em."

"You're a good shot," declared Billy.

"No, my friend," replied Blakeman modestly