tled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or
other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise,
but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious
that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.

"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut
face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the
continuous mounting of their steps.

"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the
thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but
straight ahead.

"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and
regret.

Katrine laughed.

"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good
shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way, what have I
to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."

He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to
the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced
at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of
blood-stained fur.

"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.

"Practice, that's all," she answered.

"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"

"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing
to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost
entirely sure I should kill it."

There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up
one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and
making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my
great protection. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and
wanted to kiss me--would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he
did."

"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished
tone, elevating his eyebrows.

"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely,
with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.

Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful
hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary
anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the
way.

At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her
hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you,"
and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.

It was about a fortnight