going to improve our minds," he said, aloud. "We're going to be
literary and read Pilgrim's Progress and Alice in Wonderland. I
bet we'll enjoy 'em, eh? But--doggone! She's a nice lady, and your
coat is just the same color as her hair."

Where the shade was densest and the breeze played most freely,
there Dave fixed a comfortable couch for his guest, and during the
heat of the forenoon she dozed.

Asleep she exercised upon him an even more disturbing effect than
when awake, for now he could study her beauty deliberately, from
the loose pile of warm, red hair to the narrow, tight-laced boots.
What he saw was altogether delightful. Her slightly parted lips
offered an irresistible attraction--almost an invitation; the heat
had lent a feverish flush to her cheeks; Dave could count the slow
pulsations of her white throat. He closed his eyes and tried to
quell his unruly longings. He was a strong man; adventurous days
and nights spent in the open had coarsened the masculine side of
his character, perhaps at expense to his finer nature, for it is a
human tendency to revert. He was masterful and ruthless; lacking
obligations or responsibilities of any sort, he had been
accustomed to take what he wanted; therefore the gaze he fixed
upon the sleeping woman betrayed an ardor calculated to deepen the
color in her cheeks, had she beheld it.

And yet, strangely enough, Dave realized that his emotions were
unaccountably mixed. This woman's distress had, of course, brought
a prompt and natural response; but now her implicit confidence in
his honor and her utter dependence upon him awoke his deepest
chivalry. Then, too, the knowledge that her life was unhappy,