Scott appeared with alacrity from the library, evidently detained there in hunger and impatience by Kathleen, who came in a moment later, pretty eyes innocently perplexed.

“I declare,” she said, “it is nine o’clock and dinner is supposed to be served at eight!” And she seemed more surprised than ever when old Howker, who evidently had been listening off stage, entered with reproachful dignity and announced that ceremony.

And it was the gayest kind of a ceremony, for they ate and chattered and laughed there together as inconsequentially as four children, and when Howker, with pomp and circumstance, brought in a roast boar’s head garnished with holly-like crimson elder, they all stood up and cheered as though they really liked the idea of eating it.  However, there was, from the same animal, a saddle to follow the jowl, which everybody tasted and only Scott really liked; and, to Duane’s uneasy surprise, great silver tankards of delicious home-brewed ale were set at every cover except Geraldine’s.

Catching his eye she shrugged slightly and smiled; and her engaging glance returned to him at intervals, reassuring, humorously disdainful; and her serenely amused smile seemed to say: 

“My dear fellow, please enjoy your ale.  There is not the slightest desire on my part to join you.”

“That isn’t a very big wild boar,” observed Scott, critically eyeing the saddle.

“It’s a two-year-old,” admitted Geraldine.  “I only shot him because Lacy said we were out of meat.”

“You killed him!” exclaimed Duane.

She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed.

“She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine,” he said.  “You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed.  Just look at the heads up there on the walls.”  He waved his arm around the oak wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white sabre-like tusks gleaming.  “Those are Geraldine’s,” he said with brotherly pride.

“I want to shoot one, too!” said Duane firmly.  “Do you think I’m going to let my affianced put it all over me like that?”

“Isn’t it like a man?” said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen.  “They simply can’t endure it if a girl ventures competition——­”

“You talk like a suffragette,” observed her brother.  “Duane doesn’t care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for the last three days——­”

“My boar!” she cried indignantly.  “I won’t have it!  I won’t let him.  Oh, Duane, am I a pig to want to manage this affair when I’ve been after him all winter?—­and he’s the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you ever saw—­a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of Japanese sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his nose and——­”