the lonesomest place he knew of."

[Pg 22]

She fell in with the idea rather more readily than he could have hoped, and it gave him a freshening interest in her. The women he knew best were not so entirely sensible. During what remained of the forenoon they rambled together in the forest, care-free for the moment and postponing the evil day. In such circumstances their acquaintance grew by leaps and bounds, and when they came back to make a renewed attack upon the provisions, the picnic spirit was still in the saddle.

The afternoon was spent in much the same manner; and in the absence of the conventional restraints, a good many harmless confidences were exchanged. Before the day was ended the young woman had heard the moving story of Prime's struggle for a foothold in the field of letters, a struggle which, he was modest enough to say, was still in the making; and in return she had given her own story, which was commonplace enough—so many years of school, so many in a Middle Western coeducational college, two [Pg 23] more of them as a teacher in the girls' school.

[Pg 23]

"Humdrum, isn't it?" she said. They had made the evening fire, and she was trying to cook two vegetables and the inevitable pan-bread in the one small skillet. "This is my first real adventure. I wish I might know whether I dare enjoy it as much as I'd like to."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Oh, the conventions, I suppose. We can't run fast enough or far enough to get away from them. I am wondering what the senior faculty would say if it could see me just now."

Prime grinned appreciatively. "It would probably shriek and expire."

"Happily it can't see; and to-morrow—surely Mr. Grider will come back for us to-morrow, won't he?"

"We are going to sleep soundly in that comforting belief, anyway. Which reminds me: you will have to have some sort of a place to sleep in. Why didn't I think of that before dark?"

Immediately after supper, and before he would permit himself to roll a cigarette from [Pg 24] the diminishing supply of precious tobacco, Prime fell upon his problem, immensely willing but prodigiously inexperienced. At first he thought he would build a shack, but the lack of an axe put that out of the question. Round by round, ambition descended the ladder of necessity, and 

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