“Where are we?” she asked.

“This is our hiding-place,” I replied.

“But that man—­won’t he follow our tracks?”

“We didn’t leave any tracks,” I said.

“How could we come without leaving tracks?” she queried, standing close to me and looking up into my face.

“Did you notice,” said I, “that for miles we drove in the water—­back there on the prairie after the rain?”

“Yes.”

“We drove in the water when we left the road, and we left no tracks.  Not even an Indian could track us.  We can’t be tracked.  We’ve lost Gowdy—­forever.”

I thought at first that she was going to throw her arms about my neck; but instead she took both my hands and pressed them in a long clasp.  It was the first time she had touched me, or shown emotion toward me—­emotion of the sort for which I was now eagerly longing.  I did not return her pressure.  I merely let her hold my hands until she dropped them.  I wanted to do a dozen things, but there is nothing stronger than the unbroken barriers of a boy’s modesty—­barriers strong as steel, which once broken down become as though they never were; while a woman even in her virgin innocence, is always offering unconscious invitation, always revealing ways of seeming approach, always giving to the stalled boy, arguments against his bashfulness—­arguments which may prove absurd or not when he acts upon them.  It is the way of a maid with a man, Nature’s way—­but a perilous way for such a time and such a situation.

That night we sat about the tiny camp-fire and talked.  She told me of her life in Kentucky, of her grief at the loss of her sister, of many simple things; and I told her of my farm—­a mile square—­of my plans, of my life on the canal—­which seemed to impress her as it had Rowena Fewkes as a very adventurous career.  I was sure she was beginning to like me; but of one thing I did not tell her.  I did not mention my long unavailing search for my mother, nor the worn shoe and the sad farewell letter in the little iron-bound trunk in the wagon.  I searched for tales which would make of me a man; but when it grew dark I put out the fire.  I was not afraid of Buck Gowdy’s finding us; but I did not want any one to discover us.  And that night I drew out the loads of chicken shot from my gun and reloaded it with buckshot.  I could not sleep.  After Virginia had lain down in the wagon, I walked about silently so as not to rouse her, prowling like a wolf.  I crept to the side of the wagon and listened for her breathing; and when I heard it my hands trembled, and my heart pounded in my breast.  All the things through which I had lived without partaking of them came back into my mind.  I thought of what I heard every day on the canal—­that all women were alike; that they existed only for that sort of companionship with men with which my eyes were so ignorantly familiar; that all their protestations and refusals were for effect only; that a man need only to be a man, to know