“What about my road-tax?”
“It’s due, isn’t it?” replied the girl, with a faint smile.
“Is it?” he retorted, staring at her insolently. “Well, don’t let it worry you, young woman.”
The smile died out in her eyes.
“It does worry me,” she said; “you owe the path-master two dollars, or a day’s work on the roads.”
“Let the path-master come and get it,” he replied.
“I am the path-master,” she said.
He looked down at her curiously. She had outgrown her faded pink skirts; her sleeves were too short, and so tight that the plump, white arm threatened to split them to the shoulder. Her shoes were quite as ragged as his; he noticed, however, that her hands were slender and soft under their creamy coat of tan, and that her fingers were as carefully kept as his own.
“You must be Ellice Elton,” he said, remembering the miserable end of old man Elton, who also had been a gentleman until a duel with drink left him dangling by the neck under the new moon some three years since.
“Yes,” she said, with a slight drawl, “and I think you must be Dan McCloud.”