e said; "you owe the path-master two dollars, or a
day's work on the roads."

"Let the path-master come and get it," he replied.

"I am the path-master," she said.

He looked down at her curiously. She had outgrown her faded pink skirts;
her sleeves were too short, and so tight that the plump, white arm
threatened to split them to the shoulder. Her shoes were quite as ragged
as his; he noticed, however, that her hands were slender and soft under
their creamy coat of tan, and that her fingers were as carefully kept as
his own.

"You must be Ellice Elton," he said, remembering the miserable end of
old man Elton, who also had been a gentleman until a duel with drink
left him dangling by the neck under the new moon some three years since.

"Yes," she said, with a slight drawl, "and I think you must be Dan
McCloud."

"Why do you think so?" he asked.

"From your rudeness."

He gave her an ugly look; his face slowly reddened.

"So you're the path-master?" he said.

"Yes."

"And you expect to get money out of me?"

She flushed painfully.

"You can't get it," he said, harshly; "I'm dog poor; I haven't enough to
buy two loads for my rifle. So I'll buy one," he added, with a sneer.

She was silent. He chewed the mint-leaf between his teeth and stared at
her dog.

"If you are so poor--" she began.

"Poor!" he cut in, with a mirthless laugh; "it's only a word to you, I
suppose."

He had forgotten her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, in
the fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her white
throat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calico
over her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in the
presence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in his soul against
her.

"I don't know what you mean," she said; "I also am terribly poor. If you
mean that I am not sorry for you, you are mistaken. Only the poor can
understand each other."

"I can't understand _you_," he sneered. "Why do you come and ask me to
pay money to your road-master when I have no money?"

"Because I am path-master. I must do my duty. I won't ask you for any
money, but I must ask you to work out your tax. I can't help it, can I?"

He looked at her in moody, suspicious silence.

Idle, vicious, without talent, without ambition, he had drifted part way
through college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idle
through the great universities, leaving unsavory record