The man felt a passing disappointment.  After a minute, during which the girl had dropped her eyes to her work again, he said:  “Now, why did you look at me in that way?  Ought I to be helping you in some way?  I’m awkward, I know, but I can obey if you’ll just tell me how.”

The girl seemed puzzled; then she replied almost sullenly: 

“There’s nothing more to do.  It’s ready to eat.”

She gave him a piece of the meat and the last of the corn bread in the tin cup, and placed the pan of beans beside him; but she did not attempt to eat anything herself.

He took a hungry bite or two, and looked furtively at her.

“I insist upon knowing why you looked—­” he paused and eyed her—­“why you look at me in that way.  I’m not a wolf if I am hungry, and I’m not going to eat you up.”

The look of displeasure deepened on the girl’s brow.  In spite of his hunger the man was compelled to watch her.  She seemed to be looking at a flock of birds in the sky.  Her hand rested lightly at her belt.  The birds were coming towards them, flying almost over their heads.

Suddenly the girl’s hand was raised with a quick motion, and something gleamed in the sun across his sight.  There was a loud report, and one of the birds fell almost at his feet, dead.  It was a sage-hen.  Then the girl turned and walked towards him with as haughty a carriage as ever a society belle could boast.

“You were laughing at me,” she said quietly.

It had all happened so suddenly that the man had not time to think.  Several distinct sensations of surprise passed over his countenance.  Then, as the meaning of the girl’s act dawned upon him, and the full intention of her rebuke, the color mounted in his nice, tanned face.  He set down the tin cup, and balanced the bit of corn bread on the rim, and arose.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.  “I never will do it again.  I couldn’t have shot that bird to save my life,” and he touched it with the tip of his tan leather boot as if to make sure it was a real bird.

The girl was sitting on the ground, indifferently eating some of the cooked pork.  She did not answer.  Somehow the young man felt uncomfortable.  He sat down, and took up his tin cup, and went at his breakfast again; but his appetite seemed in abeyance.

“I’ve been trying myself to learn to shoot during the last week,” he began soberly.  “I haven’t been able yet to hit anything but the side of a barn.  Say, I’m wondering, suppose I had tried to shoot at those birds just now and had missed, whether you wouldn’t have laughed at me—­quietly, all to yourself, you know.  Are you quite sure?”

The girl looked up at him solemnly without saying a word for a full minute.

“Was what I said as bad as that?” she asked slowly.

“I’m afraid it was,” he answered thoughtfully; “but I was a blamed idiot for laughing at you.  A girl that shoots like that may locate the Desert of Sahara in Canada if she likes, and Canada ought to be proud of the honor.”