“Mirandy,” said her mother, in a voice of grave rebuke, “I wish you would not be so hard with Dave. If you treated your dumb beasts like you treat him, I reckon they would never come to you a second time. You seem to forget that Dave and his father are our only friends,—and just now, Dave’s father being in the lumber camp, we’ve nobody but Dave here to look to.”
“Oh! I’ve nothing against Dave, mother, except the blood on his hands,” retorted the girl, turning her face away.
The young hunter shrugged his shoulders, deprecatingly, smiled a slow smile of understanding at Kirstie, and strode to the door.
“Good night, both of ye,” he said cheerfully. “Ye’ll see me back, liker’n not, by this time to-morrow.”
As he went, Miranda noticed with astonishment and a flush of warmth that for once in his career he was without his inseparable rifle. Kirstie, in the vacant silence that followed his going, had it on her tongue to say, “I do wish you could take to Dave, Miranda.” But the woman’s heart within her gave her warning in time, and she held her peace. Thanks to this prudence, Miranda went to bed that night with something of a glow at her heart. Dave’s coming without the rifle was a direct tribute to her influence, and to some extent outweighed his horrible suggestion that her mother should defile her mouth with meat.
The next evening the chores were all done up; the “rabbits” had come and gone with their clover and carrots; and Kirstie and Miranda were sitting down to their supper, when in walked Dave. He carried a package of something done up in brown sacking. This time, too, he carried his rifle. Kirstie’s welcome was frankly eager, but Miranda saw the rifle, and froze. He caught her look, and with a flash of intuition understood it.
“Had to bring it along, Mirandy,” he explained, with a flush of embarrassment. “Couldn’t ha’ got here without it. The wolves have come back again, six of ’em. They set on to me at my own camp door.”
“Oh, wolves!” exclaimed Miranda, in a tone of aversion. “They’re vermin.”
Since that far-off day when, with her childish face flattened against the pane, her childish heart swelling with wrath and tears, she had watched the wolves attack Ten-Tine’s little herd, she had hated the ravening beasts with a whole-souled hate.
“I hope to goodness you killed them all!” said Kirstie, with pious fervour.