And upon this green leaf the dew was gathering.

The man looked at the flower.

"Is all the world golden?" he said to himself. And he straightened and
moved and went from the tent to where the open was. He stood in the
glade in the moonlight, and wondered at it all.

Here he was--he could not comprehend it--here, all alone, save for her,
in the forest, miles away from any other human being! He had wholly
loved but two things all his life--her and nature--and the three of
them--she, nature and he--were here together! It was wonderful!

And there in that preposterous covering of canvas, half hid in the
forest's edge, was Jean Cor--no, Jean Harlson, belonging to him--all
his--away from all the world, just part of him, in this solitude!

He wondered why he had deserved it. He wondered how he had won it. He
looked up at the pure sky, with the moon defined so clearly, and all
the stars, and was grateful, and reached out his hands and asked the
Being of it to tell him, if it might be, how to do something as an
offset.

The night passed, and the sun rose clearly over the forest. The
chestnut setter roused himself from behind the tent, and came in front
of it, and barked joyously at a yellow-hammer which had chosen a great
basswood tree with deadened spaces for an early morning experiment
toward a breakfast.

There issued from the white tent a man, who looked upward toward all
the greenness and all the glory, and was glad.

He looked downward at the sward, and there was the little flower. And
the dew had run its course, and had gathered in a jewel at the leaf's
tip, and there, fallen in the midst of the disk of yellow, was the
product from the skies. There, in the flower's heart, was the perfect
gem--a diamond in a setting of fine gold!

CHAPTER XXVI.

ADVENTURES MANIFOLD.

"I've et hearty," said the woman, saucily, as the breakfast, for which
the birds furnished the music, was done. And then he initiated her
into the brief art of washing tin things in the gravel at the water's
edge. Then he informed her that target practice was about to begin,
and brought out four guns from their cases.

Two of the pieces were rifles, and of each kind one was a light and
dainty piece. He said they would practice with the rifles; that when
she became an expert rifle-shot the rest would all be easy, and then
upon the boll of a tree at one side of the opening he pinned a red
scrap of paper, and shot at it.

Wit