o the singing of birds, or the
chattering of a red-squirrel on a stub a few yards away. He was looking
beyond the cabin, to a chalk-white mass of rock that rose like a giant
mushroom in the edge of the trees--and he was listening to the ringing
of the axe, and straining his ears to catch the sound of a voice.

It was the voice he wanted most of all, and when this did not come he
choked back a whimper in his throat, and went down to the creek, and
waded through it, and came up cautiously behind the cabin, his eyes and
ears alert and his loosely jointed legs ready for flight at a sign of
danger. He wanted to set up his sharp yipping signal for the girl, but
the menace of the axe choked back his desire. At the very end of the
cabin, where the wood-vine grew thick and dense, Peter had burrowed
himself a hiding-place, and into this he skulked with the quickness of
a rat getting away from its enemies. From this protecting screen he
cautiously poked forth his whiskered face, to make what inventory he
could of his chances for supper and a safe home-coming.

And as he looked forth his heart gave a sudden jump.

It was the girl, and not the man who was using the axe today. At the
big wood-pile half a stone's throw away he saw the shimmer of her brown
curls in the sun, and a glimpse of her white face as it was turned for
an instant toward the cabin. In his gladness he would have leaped out,
but the curse of a voice he had learned to dread held him back.

A man had come out of the cabin, and close behind the man, a woman. The
man was a long, lean, cadaverous-faced creature, and Peter knew that the
devil was in him as he stood there at the cabin door. His breath, if
one had stood close enough to smell it, was heavy with whiskey. Tobacco
juice stained the corners of his mouth, and his one eye gleamed with
an animal-like exultation as he nodded toward the girl with the shining
curls.

"Mooney says he'll pay seven-fifty for her when he gets his tie-money
from the Government, an' he paid me fifty down," he said. "It'll help
pay for the brat's board these last ten years--an' mebby, when it comes
to a show-down, I can stick him for a thousand."

The woman made no answer. She was, in a way, past answering with a mind
of her own. The man, as he stood there, was wicked and cruel, every line
in his ugly face and angular body a line of sin. The woman was bent,
broken, a wreck. In her face there was no sign of a living soul. Her
eyes were