The girl brought a coat of her father’s for Field, and hung his up to dry near the furnace, and the three chatted together till the boat warped in to the wharf at her trip’s end.

Long did not know how it was, but it happened constantly after that that they fell in with the Wanita somewhere on her trip.  He found that accident pleasant enough at first, but somehow changed his mind before long, and managed that they did not happen upon the boat the next day.  That afternoon Field had some business in Bee, and set off in that direction, engaging to meet Long with traps and bear-bait at the Hexagon Hotel the next morning.  His business in Bee could not have required much time, for when Long happened down at Leewell that evening, Field was smoking with Captain Charner in the little cabin of the Wanita, the captain’s daughter sitting by with some sewing.  Long sat with them a while, but he would not smoke, and his conversation could not be called brilliant or amusing.  Field, on the other hand, talked his best and was in the highest spirits.  Long got up and went away presently, with only a good-night to the captain.

One evening, a little later, two persons were looking out on the lake and the dark hills beyond, and talking in low tones by the rail on the lower deck of the Wanita as she lay at her wharf.  A tall man passed down along the shore, and went by without looking round.  An hour later Field was walking quickly along the shore-road in the moonlight, crushing the gravel and whistling an air under his breath, when Long came out of the shaded piece ahead and started past without any sign of recognition.

On Thursday of that same week Field left Long at a point on the east side of the lake, to go to Bee; and half an hour after arriving there was out on the Leewell road, on horseback, galloping south, singing a stave of a song as he dashed along.  There was a dance that night at the George Hotel, and Field was there, the handsomest and gayest of men; and there was no prettier girl in the rooms than the one he brought and danced so well with, and whom no one else knew.  Late at night, looking up from her flushed and happy face in a pause of the dance, his eyes fell on another face, neither flushed nor happy, looking at him from a door across the length of the saloon, and he was doubly spirited and devoted after that.  He did not see the face again, but he was half conscious of being watched as the ball came at last to an end, and he saw his charge home to the house of the friend in the town with whom she was to spend the night.  He turned away with a set face when the door had closed upon her, and walked back quickly the way he had come, peering into the shadows, but he saw nothing.  He got his horse from the stable and rode north along the shore as the gray morning stole over the sky and the ever-sleeping hills and the broad, calm, misty lake.  He gave the black mare heel and rein, and brought her white and panting into Bee.  He did not put on the rough clothes again, but went as he was to meet Long at the appointed place across the lake.  He ordered the boatman who rowed him to wait.  Long was waiting for him, lying on a grassy slope.  He nodded when Field came up.