“There!” Burns exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction as he threw himself down upon the pine needle-strewn ground at Ellen’s side.  “How’s this for a comfortable nest?  Think we can spend six contented hours here, my honey?”

“Six days if you like.  How I wish we could!”

“So do I. Jove, how I’d like it!  I haven’t had enough of you to satisfy me for many a moon.  And there’s no trying to get it, except by running away like this.”

“We ought to do it oftener.”

“We ought, but we can’t.  At least we couldn’t.  Perhaps now—­”

He broke off, staring across the valley where the lake lay to the distant hills, smoky blue and purple in spite of the clear sunlight which lay upon them.

“Perhaps now—­what?”

“Well—­I might not be able to keep up my activity forever, and the time might come when I should have to take less work and more rest.”

“But you said ‘now.’”

“Did I?  I was just looking ahead a bit.  Len, are you hungry, or shall we wait a while for lunch?”

“Don’t you want a little sleep before you eat?  You haven’t had too much of it lately.”

“It would taste rather good—­if I might take it with my head in your lap.”

She arranged her own position so that she could maintain it comfortably, and he extended his big form at full length upon the rug he had brought up from the car and upon which she was already sitting.  He smiled up into her face as he laid his head upon her knees, and drew one of her hands into his.  “Now your little boy is perfectly content,” he said.

* * * * *

It was an hour before he stirred, an hour in which Ellen’s eyes had silently noted that which had escaped them hitherto, a curious change in his colour as he lay with closed eyes, a thinness of the flesh over the cheek bones, dark shadows beneath the eyes.  Whether he slept she could not be sure.  But when he sat up again these signs of wear and tear seemed to vanish at the magic of his smile, which had never been brighter.  Nevertheless she watched him with a new sense of anxiety, wondering if there might really be danger of his splendid physique giving way before the rigour of his life.

She noted that he did not eat heartily at lunch, though he professed to enjoy it; and afterward he was his old boyish self for a long time.  Then he grew quiet, and a silence fell between the pair while they sat looking off into the distance, the October sunlight on their heads.

And then, quite suddenly, something happened.

“Red!  What is the matter?” Ellen asked, startled.

In spite of the summer warmth of the spot in which they sat her husband’s big frame had begun to quiver and shake before her very eyes.  Evidently he was trying hard to control the strange fit of shivering which had seized him.

“Don’t be s-scared, d-dear,” he managed to get out between rigid jaws.  “It’s just a bit of a ch-chill.  I’ll b-be all right in a m-minute.”