harmony of outline, the justness of proportion in both the face and figure
of the man before him, filled the Irishman with delight; and the splendid
virile bulk of the mountain-man appealed irresistibly to the other's
masculinity. The little threads of silver in the tempestuous black curls
seemed to Kerry but to set off their beauty.

"Gosh! but you're a good-looker!" he muttered. And putting his estimate of
the man's charm into such form as was possible to him, he added, under his
breath, "I'd hate to have seen a feller as you tryin' to court my Katy."

This was the first of many strange days; golden September days they were,
cool and full of the ripened beauty of the departing summer. Kerry's host
taught him to snare woodcock and pheasants--shoot them the Irishman could
not, since the excitement of the thing made him fire wild.

"Now ain't that the very divil!" he would cry, after he had let his third
bird get away unharmed. "Ef I was shootin' at a man, I'd be as stiddy as a
clock. Gad! I'd be cool as an ice-wagon. But when that little old brown
chicken scoots a-scutterin' up out o' the grass like a hummin'-top, it
rattles me." His teacher apparently took no note of the significance
contained in this statement; yet Kerry's very ears were red as it slipped
out, and he felt uneasily for the handcuffs, which no longer clinked in his
pocket, but now lay carefully hidden under his fern bed.

There had been a noon-mark in the doorway of the cave, thrown by the shadow
of a boulder beside it, even before the Irishman's big nickel watch came
with its bustling, authoritative tick to bring the question of time into
the mountains. But the two men kept uncertain hours: sometimes they talked
more than half the night, the close-cropped, sandy poll and the unshorn
crest of Jove-like curls nodding at each other across the fire, then slept