ms near St. Genevieve, and he tried to flirt with
her, but she wouldn't flirt.

In some surprise, startled by his rebuff, he withdrew from the scene
with a memory that would not forget. The scene was a wheat field near
the Turkey bayou, where he was hunting wild ducks with a shotgun. She
had been gathering forty pounds of hickory nuts to eke out a meagre food
supply.

Poor she might be; ill clad was her strong young figure; her face showed
the strain of years of effort; her eyes had the fire of experience in
suffering; and she stood, a supple girl of heightened beauty while the
hunter, sure of his welcome, walked up to her, and, as both her hands
held the awkward bushel basket, ventured to tickle her under the chin.

She dropped the basket and before it reached the ground she caught the
rash youth broad-handed from cheek to back of the ear, and he stumbled
over a pile of wheat sheaves and fell headlong. As he had dropped his
shotgun, she picked it up and with her thumb on the safety, her finger
on the trigger, and her left hand on the breech, showed him how a $125
shotgun looks in the hands of one who could and would use it on any
further provocation.

He took his departure, and she carried the gun and hickory nuts home
with her. Thus began the inauspicious acquaintance of Nelia Crele and
Augustus Carline. The shotgun was very useful to the young woman. She
killed gray and fox squirrels, wild turkeys, geese and ducks, several
saleable fur-bearers, and other game in her neighbourhood. She told no
one how she obtained the weapon, merely saying she had found it; and
Augustus Carline did not pass any remarks on the subject.

By and by, however, when the tang of the slap and the passion of the
moment had left him, he knew that he had been foolish and cowardly. He
had some good parts, and he was sorry that he had been precipitate in
his attentions. After that encounter, he found the girls he met at
dances lacked a certain appearance, a kindling of the eye, a complexion,
and, a figure.

He ventured again into the river bottoms across from St. Genevieve and
fortune favoured him while tricking her. He apologized and gave his
name.

Nelia was poor, abjectly poor. Her father was no 'count, and her mother
was abject in suffering. One brother had gone West, a whisky criminal; a
sister had gone wrong, with the inheritance of moral obliquity. Nelia
had, somehow, become possessed with a hate and horror of wrong. She had
pictur