“I don’t think I am, in fact I’m sure,” she answered with a break in her curled lips.  “The dream is a bridge, a beautiful bridge, and I’ve been seeing it grow for minutes and minutes.  One end of it rests down there by that broken log—­see where the little knoll swells up from the field?—­and it stretches in a beautiful strong arch until it seems to cut across that broken-backed old hill in the distance.  And then it falls across—­but I don’t know where to put the other end of it—­the ground sinks so—­it might wobble.  I don’t want my bridge to wobble.”

Her tone was expressive of a real distress as she looked at him in appealing confusion.  And in his eyes she found the dawn of an amused wonder, almost consternation.  Slowly over his face there spread a deep flush and his lips were indrawn with a quick breath.

“Wait a minute, I’ll show you,” he said in almost an undertone.  He swung himself across the creek on a couple of stones, climbed up the boulder and seated himself at her side.  Then he drew a sketch-book from his pocket and spread it open on the slab before them.

There it was—­the dream bridge!  It rose in a fine strong curve from the little knoll, spanned across the distant ridge and fell to the opposite bank on to a broad support that braced itself against a rock ledge.  It was as fine a perspective sketch as ever came from the pencil of an enthusiastic young Beaux Arts.

“Yes,” she said with a delighted sigh that was like the slide of the water over smooth pebbles, “yes, that is what I want it to be, only I couldn’t seem to see how it would rest right away.  It is just as I dreamed it and,”—­then she looked at him with startled jeweled eyes.  “Where did I see it—­where did you—­what does it mean?” she demanded, and the flush that rose up to the waves of her hair was the reflection of the one that had stained his face before he came across the stream.  “I think I’m frightened,” she added with a little nervous laugh.

“Please don’t be—­because I am, too,” he answered.  And instinctively, like two children, they drew close together.  They both gazed at the specter sketch spread before them and drew still nearer to each other.

“I have been planning it for days,” he said in almost a whisper.  Her small pink ear was very near his lips and his breath agitated two little gold tendrils that blew across it.  “I want to build it before I go away, it is needed here for the hunting.  I came out and made the sketch from right here an hour ago.  I came back—­I must have come back to have it—­verified.”  He laughed softly, and for just a second his fingers rested against hers on the edge of the sketch.

“I’m still frightened,” she said, but a tippy little smile coaxed at the corners of her mouth.  She turned her face away from his eyes that had grown—­disturbing.

“I’m not,” he announced boldly.  “Beautiful wild things are flying loose all over the world and why shouldn’t we capture one for ourselves.  Do you mind—­please don’t!”