e, impudent
as ever, retreated scolding rather ostentatiously, and the jays,
splendid in their ornate blue, screamed opinions at each other from the
tops of trees.

"How would you like to be a bird?" she inquired.

"Hadn't thought," replied Orde.

"Don't you ever indulge in vain and idle speculations?" she inquired.
"Never mind, don't answer. It's too much to expect of a man."

She set herself in idle motion down the slope, swinging the hat at the
end of its veil, pausing to look or listen, humming a little melody
between her closed lips, throwing her head back to breathe deep the warm
air, revelling in the woods sounds and woods odours and woods life with
entire self-abandonment. Orde followed her in silence. She seemed to
be quite without responsibility in regard to him; and yet an occasional
random remark thrown in his direction proved that he was not forgotten.
Finally they emerged from the beach woods.

They faced an open rolling country. As far as the eye could reach were
the old stumps of pine trees. Sometimes they stood in place, burned and
scarred, but attesting mutely the abiding place of a spirit long since
passed away. Sometimes they had been uprooted and dragged to mark the
boundaries of fields, where they raised an abatis of twisted roots to
the sky.

The girl stopped short as she came face to face with this open country.
The inner uplift, that had lent to her aspect the wide-eyed, careless
joy of a child, faded. In its place came a new and serious gravity. She
turned on him troubled eyes.

"You do this," she accused him quite simply.

For answer he motioned to the left where below them lay a wide and
cultivated countryside--farmhouses surrounded by elms; compact wood lots
of hardwood; crops and orchards, all fair and pleasant across the bosom
of a fertile nature.

"And this," said he. "That valley was once nothing but a pine
forest--and so was all the southern part of the State, the peach belt
and the farms. And for that matter Indiana, too, and all the other
forest States right out to the prairies. Where would we be now, if we
HADN'T done that?" he pointed across at the stump-covered hills.

Mischief had driven out the gravity from the girl's eyes. She had
lowered her head slightly sidewise as though to conceal their expression
from him.

"I was beginning to be afraid you'd say 'yes-indeed,'" said she.

Orde looked bewildered, then remembered the Incubus, and laughed.

"I haven't been ve