ch kept recurring and even stirring his
lips, "She'd make them all look like thirty cents." And he colored
painfully at the crudeness of his obsessing thoughts, angrily, after a
moment, shaking them from him.

A cartridge rolled from the shelf and splashed into the pit water; the
girl unclosed her gray eyes, met his gaze, smiled dreamily; then,
flushing a little, sat up straight.

"Fifteen widgeon went off when I returned to the blind," he said,
unsmiling.

"I _beg_ your pardon. I am--I am terribly sorry," she stammered, with a
vivid blush of confusion.

But the first smile from her unclosing eyes had already done damage
enough; the blush merely disorganized a little more what was already
chaos in a young man's mind.

"Has--has anything else come in to the stools?" she asked timidly.

"No," he said, relenting.

But he was wrong. Something _had_ come into the blind--a winged,
fluttering thing, out of the empyrean--and even Uncle Dudley had not
seen or heard it, and never a honk or a quack warned anybody, or
heralded the unseen coming of the winged thing.

Marche sat staring out across the water.

"I--am so very sorry," repeated the girl, in a low voice. "Are you
offended with me?"

He turned and looked at her, and spoke steadily enough: "Of course I'm
not. I was glad you had a nap. There has been nothing doing--except
those stupid widgeon--not a feather stirring."

"Then you are not angry with me?"

"Why, you absurd girl!" he said, laughing and stretching out one hand
to her.

Into her face flashed an exquisite smile; daintily she reached out and
dropped her hand into his. They exchanged a friendly shake, still
smiling.

"All the same," she said, "it was horrid of me. And I think I boasted to
you about my knowledge of a bayman's duties."

"You are all right," he said, "a clean shot, a thoroughbred. I ask no
better comrade than you. I never again shall have such a comrade."

"But--I am your bayman, not your comrade," she exclaimed, forcing a
little laugh. "You'll have better guides than I, Mr. Marche."

"Do you reject the equal alliance I offer, Miss Herold?"

"I?" She flushed. "It is very kind of you to put it that way. But I _am_
only your guide--but it is pleasant to have you speak that way."

"What way?"

"The way you spoke about--your bayman's daughter."

He said, smilingly cool on the surface, but in a chaotic, almost idiotic
inward condition: "I've sat here for days, wishing all the whil