Misery when I took home the half-killed
boy; of the filthy stuff I had spilled on my clothes, and how I had seen
a wolf carry them off. "By George, I believe he _liked_ the
smell--though I never thought of that till now!"

"What?" Paulette gave a curious start that might have been wonder, or
enlightenment. "And you got the stuff at Skunk's Misery, out of a
bottle like this? Oh, I ought to have guessed"--but she either checked
herself, or her pause was absolutely natural--"I should have guessed
you'd had some sort of a horrible time that night you came home. You
looked so tired. But what I meant to say was I don't see how such poor
people would have a bottle of _anything_. Didn't they say what it was?"

"Didn't ask! It looked like gin, and it smelt like a sulphide factory
when it got on my clothes. They certainly had that bottle."

"Well, Skunk's Misery hasn't got _this_ bottle, anyhow!" I could see no
reason for the look on her face. It was not gay any more; it was stern,
if a girl's face can be stern, and it was white with angry suspicion.
Suddenly she laughed, rather fiercely. "I'm glad I thought of it before
the jolting broke it in the wagon! I want to get it safely to Billy
Jones's."

The reason why beat me, since she had pretended to know nothing of it,
so I said nothing. After a long silence Paulette sighed.

"You've been very kind to me, Mr. Stretton," she said, as if she had
been thinking. "I wish you could see your way to--trusting me!"

"I don't know how I've been kind," I left out the trusting part. "I
have hardly seen you to speak to till to-night, except," and I said it
deliberately, "the first time I ever saw you, sitting by the fire at La
Chance. You did speak to me then."

"Was that--the first time you saw me?" It might have been forgetfulness,
or a challenge to repeat what she had said to me by the lake in the
dark. But I was not going to repeat that. Something told me, as it had
told me when I came on her by Dudley's fire--though it was for a
different reason, now that I knew she was his and not mine--that I would
be a fool to fight my own thoughts of her with explanations, even if she
chose to make any. I looked directly into her face instead. All I could
see was her eyes, that were just dark pools in the dusk, and her mouth,
oddly grave and unsmiling. But then and there--and any one who thinks me
a fool is welcome to--my ugly suspicions of her died. And I could have
died of shame myself to th