ak' to
geeve it to my enemy."

"Imagine fightin' the little devils till they stung you crazy and
pizened your eyes shut!"

Gale fell to considering this, while Poleon filled his pipe, and,
raising his veil, undertook to smoke. The pests proved too numerous,
however, and forced him to give it up.

"Bagosh! Dey're hongry!"

"It will be all right when we get out of the woods," said the elder man.

"I guess you been purty glad for havin' Necia home again, eh?" ventured
the other after a while, unable to avoid any longer the subject
uppermost in his mind.

"Yes, I'm glad she's through with her schooling."

"She's gettin' purty beeg gal now."

"That's right."

"By-an'-by she's goin' marry on some feller--w'at?"

"I suppose so. She ain't the kind to stay single."

"Ha! Dat's right, too. Mebbe you don' care if she does get marry, eh?"

"Not if she gets a man that will treat her right."

"Wal! Wal! Dere's no trouble 'bout dat," exclaimed Doret, fervently.
"No man w'at's livin' could treat her bad. She's too good an' too purty
for have bad husban'."

"She is, is she?" Gale turned on him with a strange glare in his eyes.
"Them's the kind that get the he-devils. There's something about a good
girl that attracts a bad man, particularly if she's pretty; and it goes
double, too--the good men get the hellions. A fellow can't get so tough
but what he can catch a good woman, and a decent man usually draws a
critter that looks like a sled and acts like a timber wolf."

"Necia wouldn't marry on no bad man," said Doret, positively.

"No?" said Gale. "Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a
girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty,
too--yes, and a thousand times prettier."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically.

"She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to
what she'd been used to. Those were early days, and it was a new
country, where a person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and
cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they
were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one
was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN!
Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp
as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he
wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after;
and, it being his first affair, he was right down