“Are you sure we haven’t gone and stumbled into heaven, anyway?” demanded Andrew.

He then proceeded to roll the collar of her sweater higher about her ears and to pull the long sleeves down over her hands.  He even bent to stretch the garment an inch or two nearer the tops of her boots.

“Are you cold?” he demanded anxiously, for a stiff wind had risen and blew upon them with icy breath.

“Not a single bit,” she answered, submitting herself to his anxious ministrations with her most engaging six-going-on-seven manner.  Then she caught one of his fumbling hands in hers and pressed it to her cheek for a moment.

“Now,” she said, “we can never be lonely any more, can we?  I’m going to race you down the hill, across the meadow and over three fences to supper!” And before he could stay her she had flitted through the bushes and was running on before him, slim and fleet.

He caught her in time to swing her over the first fence and capture an elusive caress.  The second barrier she vaulted and eluded him entirely, but from the top of the last she bent and gave him his kiss as he lifted her down.  In another moment they had joined the circle around the crackling fire, where they were greeted with the wildest hilarity and overwhelmed with food and banter.

“Did you people ever hear of the man who bought a fifty-dollar coon dog, took him out to hunt the first night, almost cried because he thought he had lost him down a sink hole, hunted all night for him, came home in the daylight and found pup asleep under the kitchen stove?” demanded David as he filled two long glasses with a simmering decoction, from which arose the aroma of baked apples, spices, and some of the major’s eighty-six corn heart.  “Caroline is my point to my little story.  Have you two been sitting in Mrs. Matilda’s car or mine, or did you roost for a time on the fence over there in the dark?”

“Please, David, please hush and give me a bird and a biscuit—­I’m hungry,” answered Caroline as she sank on a cushion beside Mrs. Buchanan.

“According to the ink slingers of all times you ought not to be; but Andy has already got outside of two sandwiches, so I suppose you are due one small bird.  That cake is grand, beautiful.  I’ve put it away to eat all by myself to-morrow.  Andrew Sevier doesn’t need any.  He wouldn’t know cake from corn-pone—­he’s moonstruck.”

Just at this point a well-aimed pine-cone glanced off David’s collar and he settled down to the business in hand, which was the disposal of a bursting and perfectly hot potato, handed fresh from the coals by the attentive Jeff.

And it was more than an hour later that the tired hunters wended their way back to the city.  Polly was so sleepy that she could hardly sit her horse and was in a subdued and utterly fascinating mood, with which she did an irreparable amount of damage to the stranger within her gates as she rode along the moonlit pike, and for which she had later to make answer.  The woman’s champion dozed in the tonneau and only David had the spirit to sing as they whirled along.