as
he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.

V

As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and
more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his
own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care
with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,
the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through
incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would
have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which
helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred
his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not
his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which
the situation imposed.

It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the
openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief
in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was
seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case
before her.

He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy
New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,
where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters
that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for
himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his
parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the
ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved
fatal.

Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as
"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber
business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly
believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,
old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and
time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford
neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with
the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,
too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to
come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to
make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the
counsels of those who wished him well, he would hav