ingly to her, a
stranger. He noticed her expression and changed the subject.

"I have fancied now and then that you must have said something
remarkably in my favor that day at Scarthwaite," he said. "I never
quite understood what brought up the subject, but Julia once referred
to a picture."

Ida laughed softly.

"I'm afraid I wasn't very tactful, and I shouldn't be astonished if
your people still regard me as a partly-civilized Colonial. Anyway,
there was a picture--a rather striking one. Do you remember
Arabella's' making a sketch of you with the ax?"

"I certainly do. She wasn't complimentary in some of her remarks. She
called me wooden. But the picture?"

"Would you like to see it before you go?"

Weston glanced at her sharply, and she nodded, while a faint trace of
color crept into her face.

"Yes," she said. "I have it here. I made Arabella give it to me."

She saw the man set his lips, for it seemed scarcely probable to him
that a young woman who begged for the picture of a man would do so
merely because she desired to possess it as a work of art. Besides, he
felt, and in this he was to some extent correct, that she had intended
the admission to be provocative. He was, however, a man with a simple
code which forbade his making any attempt to claim this woman's love
while it was possible that in a few months he might once more become a
wandering outcast. He sat still for a moment or two, and it seemed to
Ida, who watched him quietly, that he had worn much the same look when
he stood beside the helpless Grenfell, gripping the big ax. This was
really the fact, though he now entered upon a sterner struggle than he
had been ready to engage in then. Once more he was endeavoring to do
what it seemed to him right.

"Miss Kinnaird would have been better employed if she had painted the
big snow peak with the lake at its feet," he said at length.

Ida abandoned the attempt to move him. She had yielded to a momentary
impulse, but she was too proud to persist.

"Well," she said, "that peak certainly was rather wonderful. You
remember it?"

"Yes," said Weston with injudicious emphasis; "I remember everything
about that camp. I can see the big black firs towering above the still
water--and you were sitting where the light came slanting in between
them. You wore that gray fishing suit with the belt round it, and you
had your hat off. The light made little gold gleams in your hair that
matched the warm red glow on