“I wouldn’t advise you to employ any such means again—­to dare me,” she retorted.

“That’s a nifty outdoor suit you’ve on,” he said, admiringly.  “I was wondering what you’d wear.  I like short outing skirts for women, rather than trousers.  The service sort of made the fair sex dippy about pants.”

“It made them dippy about more than that,” she replied.  “You and I will never live to see the day that women recover their balance.”

“I agree with you,” replied Glenn.

Carley locked her arm in his.  “Honey, I want to have a good time today.  Cut out all the other women stuff. . . .  Take me to see your little gray home in the West.  Or is it gray?”

He laughed.  “Why, yes, it’s gray, just about.  The logs have bleached some.”

Glenn led her away up a trail that climbed between bowlders, and meandered on over piny mats of needles under great, silent, spreading pines; and closer to the impondering mountain wall, where at the base of the red rock the creek murmured strangely with hollow gurgle, where the sun had no chance to affect the cold damp gloom; and on through sweet-smelling woods, out into the sunlight again, and across a wider breadth of stream; and up a slow slope covered with stately pines, to a little cabin that faced the west.

“Here we are, sweetheart,” said Glenn.  “Now we shall see what you are made of.”

Carley was non-committal as to that.  Her intense interest precluded any humor at this moment.  Not until she actually saw the log cabin Glenn had erected with his own hands had she been conscious of any great interest.  But sight of it awoke something unaccustomed in Carley.  As she stepped into the cabin her heart was not acting normally for a young woman who had no illusions about love in a cottage.

Glenn’s cabin contained one room about fifteen feet wide by twenty long.  Between the peeled logs were lines of red mud, hard dried.  There was a small window opposite the door.  In one corner was a couch of poles, with green tips of pine boughs peeping from under the blankets.  The floor consisted of flat rocks laid irregularly, with many spaces of earth showing between.  The open fireplace appeared too large for the room, but the very bigness of it, as well as the blazing sticks and glowing embers, appealed strongly to Carley.  A rough-hewn log formed the mantel, and on it Carley’s picture held the place of honor.  Above this a rifle lay across deer antlers.  Carley paused here in her survey long enough to kiss Glenn and point to her photograph.

“You couldn’t have pleased me more.”