They walked on, he clasping his gun with nerveless hands, she breaking the sapless twigs as she passed, with delicate, idle fingers.
Presently he said, as though speaking to himself: “He had no quarrel with the dead, nor has the dead with him—now. What my father would now wish I can do—I can do even yet—”
Under her deep lashes her brown eyes rested on him pitifully. But at his slightest motion she turned away, walking in silence.
As they reached the edge of the woods in a burst of sunshine he looked up at her and she stopped. Below them the smoke curled from her weather-racked house. “Will you have me for a guest?” he said, suddenly.
“A guest!” she faltered.
A new mood was on him; he was smiling now.
“Yes, a guest. It is Thanksgiving Day, Miss Jocelyn. Will you and your father forget old quarrels—and perhaps forgive?”
Again she rested her slender hands on his dogs’ heads, looking out over the valley.
“Will you forgive?” he asked, in a low voice.
“I? Yes,” she said, startled.