," mused Duane, lifting out a superb
weapon from the rack behind the glass doors. "This seems to be one of
those murderous, low trajectory pieces that fires a sort of brassy shot
which is still rising when it's a mile beyond the bunker. Now,
sweetheart, if you've a heavy suit of ancient armour which I can crawl
into, I'll defy any boar that roots for mast on Cloudy Mountain."

It was great fun for Geraldine to lay out their equipment in two neat
piles; a rifle apiece with cases and bandoliers; cartridges, two
hunting-knives with leather sheaths, shooting hoods and coats; and
timberjack's boots for her lover, moccasins for her; a pair of heavy
sweaters for each, and woollen mitts, fashioned to leave the trigger
finger free.

Beside these she laid two fur-lined overcoats, and backed away in naive
admiration at her industry.

"Wonderful, wonderful," he said. "We'll only require saucepans and
boiler lids to look exactly like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arrayed for
battle. I say, Geraldine, how am I going to flee up a tree with all that
on--and snow-shoes to boot-s," he added shamelessly, grinning over his
degraded wit.

She ignored it, advised him with motherly directness concerning the
proper underwear he must don, looked at her rifle, examined his and,
bidding him assume it, led him out to the range in the orchard and made
him target his weapon at a hundred yards.

There was a terrific fusillade for half an hour or so; his work was
respectable, and, satisfied, she led him proudly back to the house and,
curling up on the leather divan in the library, invited him to sit
beside her.

"Do you love me?" she inquired with such impersonal curiosity that he
revenged himself fully then and there; and she rose and, instinctively
repairing the disorder of her hair, seated herself reproachfully at a
distance.

"Can't a girl ask a simple question?" she said, aggrieved.

"Sure. Ask it again, dearest."

She disdained to reply, and sat coaxing the tendrils of her dark hair to
obey the dainty discipline of her slender fingers.

"I thought you weren't going to," she observed irrelevantly. But he
seemed to know what she meant.

"Don't you want me to even touch you for a year?"

"It isn't a year. Months of it are over."

"But in the months before us----"

"No."

She picked up a book. When he reached for a magazine she looked over the
top of her book at him, then read a little, glanced up, read a little
more, and looked a