avels
and--"

As he filled his lungs as though about to burst into song she hastily
turned toward the wood.

"You seem to forget that I'm mistress here while you're merely a guest!
I hate to say it, but you're in serious danger of becoming a nuisance."

"You're not resentful and hateful enough yet to frighten me away.

'He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.'

"It's a fact we can't escape from that you and I are not free agents and
we haven't been from the very moment we met at May's house. And the
lines converge here; you've got to admit that!"

"But they lead away again in quite opposite directions. It is cruel of
you to insist--"

"I insist that I love you! That's the only thing that matters!"

"Except," she corrected, "your cheerful assumption that I reciprocate
the feeling, when--"

"Let me begin all over again," he interrupted hastily. "You must realize
that all the odd happenings that followed our meeting in Washington have
come out pretty well; only this little affair of ours--"

"You call it an affair! Calamity would be a better term for it."

This silenced him for some time. Tradition held that the trail they
followed was an inheritance from Indian times; it was like an
ineffaceable line drawn in the forest by the red men in assertion of
their permanent title to the soil.

As she walked before him, carrying her head high, his heart ached with
love for her. It would be best perhaps not to urge her further; to wait
until the camp closed and then see her in a different environment. It
might be that his sister would arrange this for him, and he took courage
from the thought.

"It has been in my mind for a day or two that May must be wondering
what's become of me. I always write to her, you know; and she imagines
me in the Rockies. There must be a stack of mail waiting for me at
Banff; I must wire to have it forwarded."

"You needn't necessarily give up the trip--"

She turned her head to dodge an overhanging bough and he caught a
glimpse of her face; she was crying; and new and world-shaking emotions
were stirred in him by the sight of her tear-wet cheek.

"Do you know," he said, "when we talk about clearing up things I'd
forgotten about that buried treasure. I think it would be a mistake for
me to leave without exhausting all the possibilities of finding your
grandfather's buried gold. I wonder if