wretched supper, and asked about the country in regions to which she had
not penetrated. "It's a three days' trip," he finished a recital of an
excursion of his own.

"I'd like to go," she returned; "but I suppose I couldn't find it
alone."

He was considering the possibility of such a journey with her--it would
be pleasant in the extreme--when her mother interrupted them from the
foot of the stair.

"A sensible girl," she declared, "would think about seeing the sights of
a city, and of a cherry-derry dress with ribbons, instead of all this
about tramping off through the woods with a ragged skirt about your
naked knees."

Fanny Gilkan's face darkened, and she glanced swiftly at Howat Penny. He
was filling a pipe, unmoved. Such a trip as he had outlined, with Fanny,
was fastening upon his thoughts. It would at once express his entire
attitude toward the world, opinion, and the resentful charcoal burners.

"You wouldn't really go," he said aloud, half consciously.

The girl frowned in an effort of concentration, gazing into the thin
light of the dying fire and two watery tallow dips. Her coarsely spun
dress, coloured with sassafras bark and darker than the yellow hickory
stain, drew about her fine shoulders and full, plastic breast. "I'd like
it," she repeated; "but afterward. There is father--"

She had said father, but Howat Penny determined that she was thinking of