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she deemed it expedient to ignore the conversation she had overheard.

“Why yes—I believe Rodney Marsh is taking you. Isn’t that so, Rod?”

“That’s right.” The taller of the two young men stepped forward. He spoke with a sort of half-sheepish defiance—his old felt hat still on the back of his head. It wasn’t the voice of a gentleman, Ann decided quickly—for according to her standards a man’s social position was usually indicated by his accent—but it wasn’t a common voice; and the man himself was anything but common in appearance. The loose open shirt, and shabby gray trousers belted by a strap, revealed rather than disguised his wonderful physique. Straight featured and fearless-eyed, his clear dark skin tanned to a deeper hue by sun and wind and rain, he might have posed for a statue of untamed youth. A little too untamed perhaps. There was more than a hint of arrogance in the lift of the chin, and the poise of the fine head. “Phœbus, God of the Morning!” thought Ann quickly. “Heavens, what devastating good looks! Still, it’s a pity he doesn’t know that it’s manners to remove his hat.”

But Ann was wrong. Rodney Marsh’s old felt hat pushed on to the back of his head was a deliberate gesture—a challenge to the look she herself had bent upon him.

He knew that she must have heard all that had passed before her entrance, and he was taken at a disadvantage. He wasn’t accustomed to that. Son of an emigrant plowman, he was still king of his own small world, and he’d let her know it.

And so during the seven-mile drive in the rattling buggy, he remained morosely silent; and Ann, tired,