dead, anyway, as to have a hired housekeeper that can’t cook fit for the hogs! Either I’ll get rid of you, or I’ll starve to death right where I be!”

“What do you want for breakfast, Johnny—I mean Mr. Trumbull?” asked Doris; Trumbull’s heart thrilled.

“Taking orders from him!” barked her brother. “If I get drove too far, I’ll shoot anyway!”

“Ham and eggs and strong coffee,” replied Trumbull, with a watchful eye upon Wilkins. “You’ll have to hand me mine on a plate, for with him as hungry as he is right now I wouldn’t call it safe for me to move over to the table.”

While the savory odors of ham and coffee filled the kitchen, the eyes of Orla Wilkins grew more deepset and glaring. Yet he held out, even when Trumbull ate slowly and heartily before his famished gaze.

When Trumbull had drunk his last cup of coffee, and Wilkins still sat with his finger on a trigger of the shotgun, the situation began to look serious. Wilkins might be as pig-headed as he was hungry; and he was becoming more dangerous each minute. Trumbull saw Doris regard her brother with a worried look, and he knew that something must be done to break the deadlock. He resolved to take one last desperate chance, pinning his faith entirely upon the weakness of Orla Wilkins.

 V 

V

“Doris,” Trumbull said, “I know you must be tired, but we’ve got to get this finished. I wish you’d make me a pie out of the best apples you’ve got in the cellar. A kind of extra-special pie, with lots of cinnamon and sugar and juice and a flaky crust with just a touch of light brown here and there. A pie that’ll make a man’s mouth water as far as he can see and smell it.”

“Oh!” She stared at him, and then she laughed. “All right! I’ll bake a pie that would take first prize at the county fair.”

Doris Wilkins kept her promise. The pie that she set on the table an hour later was a masterpiece of pie making. Fresh from the oven, it gave off sweet and spicy odors which floated upon the air of the kitchen and fairly thickened it with temptation. Through holes in the top one could see hints of the interior lusciousness. Doris touched the crust with a fork, and it broke in little flakes that would melt in a man’s mouth.

Orla Wilkins could get to that pie and still keep his man covered, but he could not 

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