it yours?"

"No, this is where they grind corn."

He looked in at the low door and marveled at the strangeness of the
place, and after a long silence she asked him what he was thinking about
and he replied:

"About that little boy. He must have been happy."

"Yes, till that hateful woman came along and killed him. Wasn't she
mean? I wonder if hundreds of spirits haven't been killed that way. How
beautiful everything is sometimes when we shut our eyes. It is then that
we see spirits, but I was sick once and the spirits all got to be old
and wrinkled and they'd come up and grin at me; and after that for a
long time I was afraid to see things with my eyes shut. Isn't it nice to
be as brave as you are?"

He looked at her and his eyes were aglow with softened fire, and his
hand was near her own, resting on the log door-way, but he was not brave
now for he trembled and when he spoke his voice wavered. "Don't mock me
by calling me brave. There never was a bigger coward."

"Why, you are trembling now. Is it because I told you of the spirits?
But you ain't a coward. My father says you are brave and he knows, for
you wan't afraid of that mad dog, and there's nothin' as bad as that.
Oh, down yonder where the branch is bigger there is a water fall; and
after a rain it roars and I used to go there with little Bud and we
called it a scolding giant. Shall we go down there?"

"Yes, but you mustn't--mustn't think of that boy Bud so much."

"Oh, he was only a spirit."

"Yes, but so is everything that is anything. Take the spirit away and
we'd all be cattle. And I know exactly what species of cattle I'd
be--I'd be a calf--just a red calf with horns about an inch long, and in
nosing around I'd get a basket on my head, be frightened and make myself
ridiculous. I never knew it before, but I know now that I'd be a calf."

"Oh, no you wouldn't, no such of a thing. What makes you talk about
yourself that way? Come on, now."

Over a bluff of rock fifty feet high the rivulet poured and in the spray
they saw a rainbow. Down below where they stood ferns were rank and the
rocks were soft with moss. Here they sat and chatted of nothing but
themselves, he discovering faults in himself and she denying them,
calling him prettily to task for his slander, and thrilled him from one
indecision to another. The sun, emblazoning for a moment a distant
mountain top, purpled the lower world and then all was in shade. For a
long time they had been s