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“Nor any cord or twine?” he continued.

She handed him a ball of coarse twine.

“May I take a couple of these hooks?” he asked, pointing to some rough iron hooks in the rafters, on which bacon and jerked beef were hanging.

She nodded. He dislodged the hooks, greased them with the bacon rind, and affixed them to the twine.

“Fishin’?” she asked demurely.

“Exactly,” he replied gravely.

He threw the line in the water. It slackened at about six feet, straightened, and became taut at an angle, and then dragged. After one or two sharp jerks he pulled it up. A few leaves and grasses were caught in the hooks. He examined them attentively.

“We’re not in the creek,” he said, “nor in the old overflow. There’s no mud or gravel on the hooks, and these grasses don’t grow near water.”

“Now, that’s mighty cute of you,” she said admiringly, as she knelt beside him on the platform. “Let’s see what you’ve caught. Look yer!” she added, suddenly lifting a limp stalk, “that’s ‘old man,’ and thar ain’t a scrap of it grows nearer than Springer’s Rise,–four miles from home.”

“Are you sure?” he asked quickly.

“Sure as pop! I used to go huntin’ it for smellidge.”

“For what?” he said, with a bewildered smile.

“For this,”–she thrust the leaves to his nose and then to her own pink nostrils; “for–for”–she hesitated, and then with a mischievous simulation of correctness added, “for the perfume.”

He looked at her admiringly. For all her five feet ten inches, what a mere child she was, after all! What a fool he was to have taken a resentful attitude towards her! How charming and graceful she looked, kneeling there beside him!

“Tell me,” he said suddenly, in a gentler voice, “what were you laughing at just now?”

Her brown eyes wavered for a moment, and then brimmed with merriment. She threw herself sideways, in a leaning posture, supporting herself on one arm, while with her other hand she slowly drew out her apron string, as she said, in a demure voice:–

“Well, I reckoned it was jest too killin’ to think of you, who didn’t want to talk to me, and would hev given your hull pile to hev skipped out o’ this, jest stuck here alongside o’ me, whether you would or no, for Lord knows how long!”

“But that was last night,” he said, in a tone of raillery. “I was tired, and you said so yourself, you know. But I’m ready to talk now. What shall I tell you?”

“Anything,” said the girl, with a laugh.

“What I am thinking of?” he said, with frankly admiring eyes.

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything.” She stopped, and leaning forward, suddenly caught the brim of his soft felt hat, and drawing it down smartly over his audacious eyes, said, “Everything BUT THAT.”

It was with some difficulty and some greater embarrassment that he succeeded in getting his eyes free again. When he did so, she had risen and entered the cabin. Disconcerted as he was, he was relieved to see that her expression of amusement was unchanged. Was her act a piece of rustic coquetry, or had she resented his advances? Nor did her next words settle the question.

“Ye kin do yer nice talk and philanderin’ after we’ve settled whar we are, what we’re goin’, and what’s goin’ to happen. Jest now it ‘pears to me that ez these yere logs are the only thing betwixt us and ‘kingdom come,’ ye’d better be hustlin’ round with a few spikes to clinch ’em to the floor.”

She handed him a hammer and a few spikes. He obediently set to work, with little confidence, however, in the security of the fastening. There was neither rope nor chain for lashing the logs together; a stronger current and a collision with some submerged stump or wreckage would loosen them and wreck the cabin. But he said nothing. It was the girl who broke the silence.

“What’s your front name?”

“Miles.”

“MILES,–that’s a funny name. I reckon that’s why you war so FAR OFF and DISTANT at first.”