“Why—why, I couldn’t contemplate anything else.”
Half laughing, half angry, she strained to release his arm, then desisted, breathless, gray eyes meeting his.
“No other man,” she breathed—“no other man—” There was a silence, then her arms crept up closer, encircling his neck. “There is no other man,” she sighed.
THE MARKET-HUNTER
A WARM October was followed by a muggy, wet November. The elm leaves turned yellow but did not fall; the ash-trees lighted up the woods like gigantic lanterns set in amber; single branches among the maples slowly crimsoned. As yet the dropping of acorns rarely broke the forest silence in Sagamore County, although the blue-jays screamed in the alders and crows were already gathering for their annual caucus.
Because there had been as yet no frost the partridges still lurked deep in the swamps, and the woodcock skulked, shunning the white birches until the ice-storms in the north should set their comrades moving southward.
There was little doing in the feathered world. Of course the swallows had long since departed, and with the advent of the blue-jays and golden-winged wood peckers a few heavy-pinioned hawks had appeared, wheeling all day over the pine-woods, calling querulously.