showing a pink-green tinge of color in the red sunset rays.

"Oh," I said softly as I clasped my hands to my breast and breathed in
deep, "I'm glad, glad I didn't have to let them sell it. I love it. I love
it!"

"Sell it?" asked Adam as he brushed a rug of dry leaves from under the
bushes upon one of the huge slabs of rock before the door of the
spring-house for me to sit on, and took two apples from his pocket.

"Yes, and I'll work both my fingers and toes to the bone before I'll give
it up," I answered as I crouched down beside him on the leaves and began to
munch at the apple, which he had polished on the sleeve of his soft, gray,
flannel shirt before he handed it to me.

While we dined on the two red apples, the tangy nuts, and a few hard
crackers that, I think, were dog-biscuits, I told him all about it, up to
my defiance and assumption of the management of Elmnest in the library
after dinner.

"I _can_ keep us from starving until I learn chickens, can't I?" I asked
after the recital, and I crouched a little closer to him on the rock, for
black shadows were coming in between the trees and into my consciousness,
and all the pink moonlight had faded as a rosy dream, leaving the world
about us silver gray.

"I wonder just how much genuine land passion there is in the hearts of
women?" said Adam, softly answering my question with another. "The duration
of race life depends upon it really."