hat _I'm_ a-goin' t' say, Lime Gilman,
'fore you pitch into Dad."

"I _know_ what you're a-goin' t' say."

"No, y' don't."

"Yes, but I _do_, though."

"Well, ask me, and see, if you think you're so smart. Jest as like 's
not, you'll slip up."

"All right; here goes. Marietty Bacon, ain't you an' Lime Gilman goin'
t' be married?"

"No, sir, we ain't," laughed the girl, snatching up the plate and
darting away to the house, where she struck up "Weevily Wheat," and went
busily on about her cooking. Lime threw a kiss at her, and fell to work
on his log with startling energy.

Lyman looked forward to his interview with the old man with as much
trepidation as he had ever known, though commonly he had little fear of
anything--but a girl.

Marietta was not only the old man's only child, but his housekeeper, his
wife having at last succumbed to the ferocious toil of the farm. It was
reasonable to suppose, therefore, that he would surrender his claim on
the girl reluctantly. Rough as he was, he loved Marietta strongly, and
would find it exceedingly hard to get along without her.

Lyman mused on these things as he drove the gleaming axe into the huge
maple logs. He was something more than the usual hired man, being a
lumberman from the Wisconsin pineries, where he had sold out his
interest in a camp not three weeks before the day he began work for
Bacon. He had a nice "little wad o' money" when he left the camp and
started for La Crosse, but he had been robbed in his hotel the first
night in the city, and was left nearly penniless. It was a great blow to
him, for, as he said, every cent of that money "stood fer hard knocks
an' poor feed. When I smelt of it I could jest see the cold, frosty
mornin's and the late nights. I could feel the hot sun on my back like
it was when I worked in the harvest-field. By jingo! It kind o' made my
toes curl up."

But he went resolutely out to work again, and here he was chopping wood
in old man Bacon's yard, thinking busily on the talk which had just
passed between Marietta and himself.

"By jingo!" he said all at once, stopping short, with the axe on his
shoulder. "If I hadn't 'a' been robbed I wouldn't 'a' come here--I
never'd met Merry. Thunder and jimson root! Wasn't that a narrow
escape?"

And then he laughed so heartily that the girl looked out of the window
again to see what in the world he was doing. He had his hat in his hand
and was whacking his thigh with it.

"Lyman G