re everywhere from cellar to garret, so to speak, and
you couldn't escape them. It would be a bad, bad thing for you, Martin, if
he were to hear that you make propositions of the kind you have made to
the ladies that he pays you to take out into the woods to guide and to
protect."

Martin was on the point of a violent expostulation, but she stopped him.

"Now I know what you are going to say," she exclaimed, "but it isn't of
any use. You are in his employment, and you are bound to honor and to
respect him; that is the way a guide can show himself to be a gentleman."

"But suppose," said Martin, quickly, "that he, knowing my family as he
does, should think I had done wisely in speaking to you."

A cloud came over her brow. It annoyed her that he should thus parry her
thrust.

"Well, you can ask him," she said, abruptly; "and if he doesn't object,
you can go to see my mother, when she gets home, and ask her. And here
comes Mr. Matlack. I think he has been calling you. Now don't say another
word, unless it is about fish."

But Matlack did not come; he stopped and called, and Martin went to him.

Margery walked languidly towards the woods and sat down on the projecting
root of a large tree. Then leaning back against the trunk, she sighed.

"It is a perfectly dreadful thing to be a girl," she said; "but I am glad
I did not speak to him as I did to Mr. Raybold. I believe he would have
jumped into the lake."

CHAPTER XXI

THE INDIVIDUALITY OF PETER SADLER

"Martin," said Matlack, sharply, before the young man had reached him, "it
seems to me that you think that you have been engaged here as lady's-maid,
but there's other things to do besides teaching young women about trees
and fishes. If you think," continued Matlack, when the two had reached the
woodland kitchen, "that your bein' a hermit is goin' to let you throw all
the work on me, you're mistaken. There's a lot of potatoes that's got to
be peeled for dinner."

Without a word Martin sat down on the ground with a pan of potatoes in
front of him and began to work. Had he been a proud crusader setting forth
to fight the Saracens his blood could not have coursed with greater warmth
and force, his soul could not have more truly spurned the earth and all
the common things upon it. What he had said to Margery had made him feel
ennobled. If Raybold had that instant appeared before him with some
jeering insult, Martin would have pardoned him with lofty scorn; a