Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient of valuable gifts might have influential friends.  But a glance at the bare room, which looked like a camp, and the strange, unconventional garb of its occupant, restored his former convictions.  There might be a promise of intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.

“Ah!  We must not forget that we are watched over in the night season,” he said, laying his hand on Low’s shoulder, with an illustration of celestial guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable grotesqueness.  “No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth.”

Unfortunately, Low’s practical mind did not go beyond a mere human interpretation.  It was enough, however, to put a new light in his eye and a faint color in his cheek.

“Could it have been Miss Nellie?” he asked, with half-boyish hesitation.

Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what appeared to him the purely providential interposition of this suggestion.  Seizing it and Low at the same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his chair.

“Ah, you rascal!” he said, with infinite archness; “that’s your game, is it?  You want to trap poor Father Wynn.  You want to make him say ‘No.’  You want to tempt him to commit himself.  No, sir!—­never, sir!—­no, no!”

Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie’s, and that her father only good-humoredly guessed it, the young man’s simple, truthful nature was embarrassed.  He longed to express his gratitude, but feared to betray the young girl’s trust.  The Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his mind.

“No,” he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting Low over its back.  “No, sir—­no!  And you want me to say ‘No,’ don’t you, regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain young man in the Carquinez Woods?—­ha, ha!  You’d like me to say that I knew nothing of the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picknickings there—­he, he!—­you sly dog!  Perhaps you’d like to tempt Father Wynn further, and make him swear he knows nothing of his daughter disguising herself in a duster and meeting another young man—­isn’t it another young man?—­all alone, eh?  Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say No.  No, sir, nothing of the kind ever occurred.  Ah, you young rascal!”

Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn’s hearty manner, Low, with his usual directness, however, said, “I do not want anyone to deny that I have seen Miss Nellie.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Wynn, abandoning his method, considerably disconcerted by Low’s simplicity, and a certain natural reserve that shook off his familiarity.  “Certainly it’s a noble thing to be able to put your hand on your heart and say to the world, ’Come on, all of you!  Observe me; I have nothing to conceal.  I walk with Miss Wynn in the woods as her instructor—­her teacher, in fact.  We cull a flower here and there; we pluck an herb fresh from the hands of the Creator.  We look, so to speak, from Nature to Nature’s God.’  Yes, my young friend, we should be the first to repel the foul calumny that could misinterpret our most innocent actions.”