sitting in Mrs. Matilda's car or mine, or did you roost for a time on the
fence over there in the dark?"

"Please, David, please hush and give me a bird and a biscuit--I'm
hungry," answered Caroline as she sank on a cushion beside Mrs. Buchanan.

"According to the ink slingers of all times you ought not to be; but Andy
has already got outside of two sandwiches, so I suppose you are due one
small bird. That cake is grand, beautiful. I've put it away to eat all by
myself to-morrow. Andrew Sevier doesn't need any. He wouldn't know cake
from corn-pone--he's moonstruck."

Just at this point a well-aimed pine-cone glanced off David's collar and
he settled down to the business in hand, which was the disposal of a
bursting and perfectly hot potato, handed fresh from the coals by the
attentive Jeff.

And it was more than an hour later that the tired hunters wended their
way back to the city. Polly was so sleepy that she could hardly sit her
horse and was in a subdued and utterly fascinating mood, with which she
did an irreparable amount of damage to the stranger within her gates
as she rode along the moonlit pike, and for which she had later to make
answer. The woman's champion dozed in the tonneau and only David had the
spirit to sing as they whirled along.

Hadn't Phoebe stirred the sugar into his cup of coffee and then in an
absolutely absent-minded manner tasted it before she had come around the
fire to hand it to him? It had been a standing argument between them for
years as to a man's right to this small attention, which they both teased
Mrs. Matilda for bestowing upon the major. It was an insignificant,