the tiny limb with surprising dexterity and light

ness.

"All that the good Gawd gave to this teeny chickun was its legs, and it beats me to see how He can stand f'r 'em bein' broke. It beats me. Mebbe with a big ole chickun I could stand it, but I declar I hate to see any li'l thing robbed of its show." As he spoke he was winding thread in even coil around the splints to hold them firmly in place.

Midway in the critical job he called a halt, placing in his pocket the spool from which he was winding, thus connecting doctor and nurse by a cobweb line that could not be ruptured without danger to the patient. "What now?" asked Laurie, placated into friendli

ness.

But he succeeded in slaying that friendliness at its birth.

"This now," he answered, taking one of her braids in his hand and stroking it with the other as if it had been a bird.

"Please put it down," she asked as composedly as she could, though she felt as outraged as if her hand or cheek were being stroked.

"It feels jes' as I figured it would, satin soft and alive," he pleasantly observed, still petting the strand. "You don't know it, of course, but you are being rude."

"If I don't know then it can't be rude."

"Consider it from my point of view, please. My ways are not yours."

"But mine's easy to learn."

Her carefully kept patience now flew.

"You are not so simple as you pretend to be. I can tell from the way you speak. When you are keeping

guard over yourself you talk very decent English; when you let go you talk like a

"Georgy cra―acker," he drawled helpfully. "I was feared you-uns might say nigger."

"And now you are forcing me to stand an indignity because you know I won't jerk away for fear of further hurting this little hurt thing. You are not fair!"

"Whenever you hear of a man playing fair with a girl you can bet on one thing, and that is he's hoping to lose out." Cal Tandy was still fondling the strands of hair, when, chancing to glance aside, he saw something that induced him to restore the braid to the shoulder where it belonged, and to pick the spool from his pocket. "Os-ce-oly Cyar-ter or I be da—am,” he murmured thoughtfully. In just such a tone would he have acknowledged the advent of a mosquito, and then killed it.

By the time the very self-conscious and very pretty new arrival had come up to the pair he was again winding thread around the splints, doing it with steady hands and preternaturally surgical absorption.

"For mercy sake," ejaculated Osceola, after discovering for herself the ins and outs of the operation. Her luminous eyes were fixed upon the little chicken, but her wave of color sprang from more than clinical interest. "Do you aim to mend it?"

"Howdy, Osceoly," observed Cal punctiliously.

"Howdy, Cal." She fell naturally into his speech, but her words were broken by a flutter of emotion that was conspicuously absent from his.

"How's y' pap?" No rising inflection accompanied this ritual.

"Just the same, I allow, thank you." The shy tumult in her young bosom was rather painfully evident.

The other girl was faintly shocked at so guileless a display of feeling, not understanding how any man could arouse it, and not approving at all of the lack of self-control that would permit it to become so visible. She was distressed to be shown through the instrumentality of a girl whom she liked that the blame for a great deal of male assurance could be laid at the door of just such female enticement as poor little untutored Osceola was now parting with. She saw that Osceola would have felt splendidly honored at having her tresses fingered.

Laurie sighed deeply for her sex and wished that one set would not undermine the foundation upon which another set rested. As for men, the poor brutes, perhaps in their relations with women they were very much what they were permitted to be! For herself, she merely held the chicken and listened.

"How too's y'r ma?" Cal frowned deeply, not at any definite remembrance of Mrs. Carter, but because he had reached that stage in surgery which called for the tying of a knot, and to tie a knot in any thread finer than whipcord overtaxes a turpentiner every time.

"She's the same, I allow, thank you." Osceola raised her lashes and swept him with a glance that was frankly admiring and rallying. "Cal, your fingers are all thumbs. Want help?" The two words were not only a question but an offer, and a palpitating offer, of her intimate coöperation. To meet a man halfway was evidently tact, and to meet him more than halfway a virtue.

"Tie it yourself," ordered Cal, gladly relinquishing the intimacy and the knot together.

Osceola flushingly accepted the vacated place and undertook the assigned task, bungling it tremulously un

der the happy honors of occupying a spot of ground so lately his.

Laurie drew another deep sigh.

"You haven't been to we-all's house for some time, Cal." The knot was tied.

"No," he answered with a great deal of decision.

The unmistakable inference was that any undue expectation on her part would keep him off the longer. Osceola caught her breath like one doused with cold water, but her affection accepted the rebuff as the body accepts cold water-tonically. Her big brown eyes promptly dismissed archness and grew gently meek. Had she been a wife she probably would have gone home and fried him an apology in the shape of a plateful of doughnuts.

He drew a jackknife and opened a blade ground to a sharpness calculated to cut iron, testing it with his thumb preparatory to trimming the threads at the end of the knot.

Upon seeing his thumb run over the murderous edge, Laurie succumbed to one of the feminine weaknesses and went inconsequentially limp and pale.

"Do be careful!" she begged. "You might get cut!" She easily could have added, "And I would not see a dog do that!" But of course she did not.

Before referring to the remark, Cal Tandy perfected the splint, returned the knife to his pocket, the chick to its box. Then straightening himself to his full six feet one in the air, he smiled down at her rather triumphantly.

"Sounds 's if you'd take consid'rable coaxing, Laurie McAllister, afore you'd plug a 'miscreant' here." He tossed his one unruly lock of black hair back into place, and touched his temple. Or plunk him with a bullet

here." He laid his clenched fist over his dynamo engine of a heart. "So I calc'late he needn't be any too allfired feared o' yore li'l ole gun."

"Is there a chance for this chicken to recover?" she asked, as if he had been speaking of that instead of the gun-of which he had not been "any too all-fired feared" in the first place.

He accorded her a look of appreciation for her fine effrontery, and then replied, "Yes, if you keep from presenting it with any of woman's pity and jes' nachelly leave it be."

"Now I'll have to bid you good day," she remarked affably. "Osceola and I have gone into the yam business. I am so glad to have her company. I couldn't get on without it any more than I could without her help. Come, Osceola."

Comforting herself with the theory-a true onethat she would be fairly free from his raids now that he knew his little cracker sweetheart was scheduled to be in on the scenes, she and her partner sauntered down to the field of industry while the Georgian lounged gracefully off in the opposite direction, losing himself in the now dimming forest, whose shadowy avenues seemed to open their arms to him as to a kindred wild thing and then close them about him in a dark embrace that sheltered and protectingly hid.

Down among the tendrils and runners of the sweetpotato vines, although "Locksley Hall" lilted sweetly along to Cousin Amy and although the pile of tubers encouragingly grew, the sylvan work lacked much of its morning artlessness, for just as there are some people who improve the landscape, there are some who revolutionize it, and the influence of Calhoun Tandy lingered more or less damagingly. Laurie was con