with a cordial gesture.

"Come here, my little man!" he said in a kind voice.

Rufe hesitated. Then he was seized by sudden distrust. Who was
this stranger? and why did he call, "Come here!"

Perhaps the fears already uppermost in Rufe's mind influenced his
hasty conclusion. He cast a horrified glance upon the old gentleman
in black, a garb of suspicious color to the little mountaineer, who
had never seen men clad in aught but the brown jeans habitually worn
by the hunters of the range. He remembered, too, the words of an
old song that chronicled how alluring were the invitations of Satan,
and with a frenzied cry he fled frantically through the laurel.

Away and away he dashed, up steep ascents, down sharp declivities,
falling twice or thrice in his haste, but hurting his clothes more
than himself.

It was not long before he was in sight of home, and Towse met him at
the fence. The feeling between these two was often the reverse of
cordial, and as Rufe climbed down from rail to rail, his sullen
"Lemme 'lone, now!" was answered by sundry snaps at his heels and a
low growl. Not that Towse would really have harmed him--fealty to
the family forbade that; but in defense of his ears and tail he
thought it best to keep fierce possibilities in Rufe's
contemplation.

Rufe sat down on the floor of the uninclosed passage between the two
rooms, his legs dangling over the sparse sprouts of chickweed and