"You--shot me, you brute!" she cried accusingly at last.
"You--SHOT me!" And she sobbed again.

Before he answered, he drew backward a step or two, sat down upon
the edge of a rock which had rolled out from a stone-heap, and
pulled her down beside him, still holding her fast, as if he half
believed her capable of soaring away over the treetops, after
all.

"I guess I didn't murder you--from the chase you gave me. Did I
hit you at all?"

"Yes, you did! You nearly broke my arm--and you might have killed
me, you big brute! Look what you did--and I never harmed you at
all!" She pushed up a sleeve, and held out her arm accusingly in
the moonlight, disclosing a tiny, red furrow where the skin was
broken and still bleeding. "And you shot a big hole right
through Aunt Phoebe's sheet!" she added, with tearful severity.

He caught her arm, bent his head over it--and for a moment he was
perilously near to kissing it; an impulse which astonished him
considerably, and angered him more. He dropped the arm rather
precipitately; and she lifted it again, and regarded the wound
with mournful interest.

"I'd like to know what right you have to prowl around shooting at
people," she scolded, seeing how close she could come to touching
the place with her fingertips without producing any but a
pleasurable pain.