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than offset by the dignity of the type and language in which it was presented.

"I refuse to lower my intellect by perusing the blue and red outbursts of trash and vulgar sensationalism of American journalism, so-called!" he remarked when she ensconced him at the parlor table with his beloved sheet and a reading lamp.

This was a favorite remark of his and was noticeably never uttered until he had read every line of the blue and red outbursts from end to end.

By way of answer Laurie kissed the top of his silvery white head. She felt that this response was safer and more dutiful than any verbal one she could truthfully make, because, for herself, she was already "lowered" to the extent of requiring to see a headline in crimson letters half a foot long before she could convince herself that anything had really happened in the world. This is one of the penalties one pays for the privilege of having been born in the borough of Manhattan.

Then she went into that secluded domestic realm known as the back of the house, and, after filling a saucer with milk for Little Eva, she opened the symbolical bolt-a thing, by the way, that any burglar worth the name could have pried loose with the little finger of his left hand-and stepped out again upon the porch which was now the darkest nook of night.

At the lowest edge of the black sky the frightened little thread of new moon was hurriedly sinking.

"Consider I've knocked," drawled the deep voice, coming from where it had come before.

When her eyes became used to the dark, whose opaqueness seemed to roll silently upward in successive curtains like mists in a Christmas pantomime, dis

closing a night world that was fairly luminous after all, she saw that Calhoun Tandy was in the spot where she had left him. The lame chick was humped in slumber on top of one of the mountaineer's huge boots and the grateful kitten was still curled in the warmth of his broad hand.

Laurie sat down the saucer before attempting to speak. She felt a peculiar need of freeing herself from all possible encumbrances.

"You should have gone home," she said, rather wondering why she was allowing herself to be frightened at a situation which was only an amusing one, only an evidence of the inability of a Georgia cracker to with the subtleties of the social code. "I virtually told you to go."

cope

"An' I virtually calc'lated I'd stay," he replied. "Now that I've 'knocked' you ain't too 'startled' to come down the steps an' have a talk, are you?"

"Certainly not," she answered, swallowing her indignation at the sarcasm and swallowing it with difficulty for the reason that she now began to fear that she had shown distrust without cause.

She descended the broad steps until she was at the bottom one whose house-corner he loungingly occupied. Then when he spoke it was with a sudden growl of anger and threat.

"You set, Laurie McAllister! You set an' act friendly!" he ordered.

After a quick breath of indecision she finally seated herself at the extreme farther end of the step.

"Now then, what do you want?" she asked. "First an' foremost, I want you sh'd come and take yore cat."

"Put it down," she said, struggling with a desire to

smile.

The command had been surprisingly inane. "You do as yo're bid," shot from him furiously. "Put it down!" she repeated, losing the desire to smile.

"Come, take it or I chuck it," he said, making a fiercely illustrative move in the general direction of a tree against whose trunk the unsuspecting white kitten could easily have been battered to its death.

"I'll come and get it," cried Laurie, growing suddenly sick at heart.

She moved along the step an inch at a time till she was near enough rescuingly to scoop Little Eva fromthe man's hand. That hand's freed fingers immediately grasped her arm and held her fast in her unsought proximity.

Cal Tandy then gave way to one of his silent spasms of helpless amusement, saying, as he again took possession of the kitten in order to place it safely upon the ground, but holdling tight to his prisoner the while:

"I'd no more hurt a li'l cat that had come to me to fall asleep than you-uns 'ud shoot a bullet through a piece o' live flesh."

"Loose my arm and see how quickly I'd do it!" she panted indignantly.

To a degree he accepted this dare inasmuch as he prisoned her around the waist, leaving her arms free. "Go on an' try," he permitted. "But you air makin' me mad an' it ain't ever a good plan."

"It is anything but manly of you to act this way or talk this way," she said, trying to convince him by her earnest, matter-of-fact tone. "Why don't you play the gentleman ?"

"I calc'late I am. I've studied into their ways some.

I want you-I want you. Understand that? An' what I want I take. There's about all there is to it."

"That's no way to talk either," she said, bent on keeping her voice steady and her mind unafraid. She was never a hunter for trouble, but she knew it when she met it, and it was here now, in this silent, lonely hour, in this silent, lonely place, where no human scream could hope to be distinguished from the constant screech of the night owl, and where a shot would be set down as an attack on the flying squirrel that raids in the dark and has to be punished in the dark. She let her useless revolver lie idle in her pocket, and cleared her wits for action. "Calhoun Tandy, if you are asking me to marry you I thank you for the intended honor —for I suppose you mean it to be an honor, though you don't know the words for it-I thank you, but emphatically decline. Now let that settle it."

He gave an angry laugh. The feathered infant in splints slid from his boot, and, after a few frightened, disconcerted cheeps, humped itself in a corner.

"Talk don't settle nothing like facts does," announced Tandy, truly enough. "An' the facts is I'm a-holdin' you an' will keep a-holdin'."

In proof of this materialized theory he drew her closer to him.

"Let facts settle it my way then," she entreated. "Stop to think seriously a moment. You and I are

not suited."

"Oh, I allow I don't talk you-uns talk," he said, lapsing into one of his swift furies. "But what's talk in the long run? "Thout talk I kin keep a roof over yore pretty head an' food in yore mouth, an' I kin keep my heart clean for you. I'm goin' to take you back with me to Georgy, an' learn you to be con

tented in the mountains where life is lived free, an' trouble don't come no nearer than a rifle lets it, an' a girl belongs to the man who kin take her, an' folks kin lie down to sleep at night 'thout havin' to be feared o' any tomorrow. When I first see you I swore I'd have you. I liked yore hair and yore skin. Then I liked yore voice an' yore sass an' yore spunk an' yore fight. Then I swore if you didn't give yo❜self I'd take you an' make yo' glad of it by lovin' yo' truly. No, I can't talk you-uns talk, but I kin love the same as any man, an' love's what counts. I didn't have to go to skule to learn to kiss."

The bending closer of his big head, with its heavy thatch of black hair and drooping forehead-lock, her terrified hatred of the kiss he intended to give, endowed her with unexpected swift strength. She flung herself free from him, jumped to her feet, ran up the steps and tried to open the door.

"Don't you know I kin come in as easy as stay out?" he asked, rising tumultuously.

"And I am going to ask you in, really I am," she stammered truthfully. She nervously wanted to laugh at the prodigiousness of disbelief that stared from his dark face, but the idea had come to her that she was suffering from his attentions largely because she had never been seen by him except in her present country garb of short skirt, thick boots, and meek braids, representing the unmilitant type that aches to be thoroughly "bossed" by its hardy males who, in courteous return, treat them to plenty of drama in courtship. They consider drama necessary to all professions. A minister is paid according to the ability he has to "take on grand" in a funeral sermon. Laurie determined to show Cal Tandy that she was rather of the

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