r of the
room, removed her smart slippers, and put on a pair of walking-shoes,
tying them, with her foot on a chair, in a quiet disregard of her
visitor's presence; took a brown holland sunbonnet from the wall,
clapped it over her browner hair and hanging braids, and tied it under
her chin with apparently no sense of coquetry in the act--becoming
though it was--and without glancing at him. Alas for Madison's ethics!
The torment of her worldly speech and youthful contempt was nothing to
this tacit ignoring of the manhood of her lover--this silent acceptance
of him as something even lower than her husband. He followed her with a
burning cheek and a curious revolting of his whole nature that it is to
be feared were scarcely Christian. The willows opened to let them pass
and closed behind them.

An hour later Mrs. McGee returned to her leafy bower alone. She took off
her sunbonnet, hung it on its nail on the wall, shook down her braids,
took off her shoes, stained with the mud of her husband's claim, and put
on her slippers. Then she ascended to her eyrie in the little gallery,
and gazed smilingly across the sunlit Bar. The two gaunt shadows of
her husband and lover, linked like twins, were slowly passing along the
river bank on their way to the eclipsing obscurity of the cottonwoods.
Below her--almost at her very feet--the unconscious Arthur Wayne was
pushing his work on the river bed, far out to the promontory. The
sunlight fell upon his vivid scarlet shirt, his bared throat, and head
clustering with perspiring curls. The same sunlight fell upon Mrs.
McGee's brown head too, and apparently put a wicked fancy inside it. She
ran to her bedroom, and returned with a mirror from its wall, and, after
some trials in getting the right angle, sent a searching reflection upon
the spot where Arthur was at work.

For an instant a diamond flash played around him. Then he lifted his
head and turned it curiously towards the crest above him. But the next
moment he clapped his hands over his dazzled but now smiling eyes, as
Mrs. McGee, secure in her leafy obscurity, fell back and laughed to
herself, like a very schoolgirl.

It was three weeks later, and Madison Wayne was again sitting alone in
his cabin. This solitude had become of more frequent occurrence lately,
since Arthur had revolted and openly absented himself from his religious
devotions for lighter diversions of the Bar. Keenly as Madison felt his
defection, he was too much pre