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“I am very foolish,” she began, in a voice and accent that at once asserted a cultivated woman, “but I so seldom meet anybody here that a voice quite startled me. That, and the heat,” she went on, wiping her face, into which the color was returning violently–“for I seldom go out as early as this–I suppose affected me.”

Mr. Bowers had that innate Far-Western reverence for womanhood which I fancy challenges the most polished politeness. He remained patient, undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angular arm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection being in the act rather than in any spoken word, and requiring no response.

“Like as not, ma’am,” he said, cheerfully looking everywhere but in her burning face. “The sun IS pow’ful hot at this time o’ day; I felt it myself comin’ yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets it back, it’s likely to come out ag’in. Ye can’t check it no more than the sap in that choked limb thar”–he pointed ostentatiously where a fallen pine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but which still put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. “Do you live far from here, ma’am?” he added.

“Only as far as the first turning below the hill.”

“I’ve got my buggy here, and I’m goin’ that way, and I can jist set ye down thar cool and comfortable. Ef,” he continued, in the same assuring tone, without waiting for a reply, “ye’ll jist take a good grip of my arm thar,” curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherd’s crook, “I’ll go first, and break away the brush for ye.”

She obeyed mechanically, and they fared on through the thick ferns in this fashion for some moments, he looking ahead, occasionally dropping a word of caution or encouragement, but never glancing at her face. When they reached the buggy he lifted her into it carefully,–and perpendicularly, it struck her afterwards, very much as if she had been a transplanted sapling with bared and sensitive roots,–and then gravely took his place beside her.

“Bein’ in the timber trade myself, ma’am,” he said, gathering up the reins, “I chanced to sight these woods, and took a look around. My name is Bowers, of Mendocino; I reckon there ain’t much that grows in the way o’ standin’ timber on the Pacific Slope that I don’t know and can’t locate, though I DO say it. I’ve got ez big a mill, and ez big a run in my district, ez there is anywhere. Ef you’re ever up my way, you ask for Bowers–Jim Bowers–and that’s ME.”

There is probably nothing more conducive to conversation between strangers than a wholesome and early recognition of each other’s foibles. Mr. Bowers, believing his chance acquaintance a superior woman, naively spoke of himself in a way that he hoped would reassure her that she was not compromising herself in accepting his civility, and so satisfy what must be her inevitable pride. On the other hand, the woman regained her self-possession by this exhibition of Mr. Bowers’s vanity, and, revived by the refreshing breeze caused by the rapid motion of the buggy along the road, thanked him graciously.

“I suppose there are many strangers at the Green Springs Hotel,” she said, after a pause.

“I didn’t get to see ’em, as I only put up my hoss there,” he replied. “But I know the stage took some away this mornin’: it seemed pretty well loaded up when I passed it.”

The woman drew a deep sigh. The act struck Mr. Bowers as a possible return of her former nervous weakness. Her attention must at once be distracted at any cost–even conversation.

“Perhaps,” he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, “I’m a-talkin’ to Mrs. McFadden?”

“No,” said the woman, abstractedly.

“Then it must be Mrs. Delatour? There are only two township lots on that crossroad.”

“My name IS Delatour,” she said, somewhat wearily.