He shook his head.  “I do not give up that readily, Shirley.  I didn’t know how dear—­what your friendship meant to me, until you sent me away; I didn’t think there was any hope until you warned me those dogs were hunting me—­and called me Bryce.”  He held out his hand.  “‘God gave us our relations,’” he quoted, “’but thank God, we can choose our friends.’  And I’ll be a good friend to you, Shirley Sumner, until I have earned the right to be something more.  Won’t you shake hands with me?  Remember, this fight to-day is only the first skirmish in a war to the finish—­and I am leading a forlorn hope.  If I lose—­well, this will be good-bye.”

“I hate you,” she answered drearily.  “All our fine friendship—­ smashed—­and you growing stupidly sentimental.  I didn’t think it of you.  Please go away.  You are distressing me.”

He smiled at her tenderly, forgivingly, wistfully, but she did not see it.  “Then it is really good-by,” he murmured with mock dolorousness.

She nodded her bowed head.  “Yes,” she whispered.  “After all, I have some pride, you know.  You mustn’t presume to be the butterfly preaching contentment to the toad in the dust.”

“As you will it, Shirley.”  He turned away.  “I’ll send your axe back with the first trainload of logs from my camp, Colonel,” he called to Pennington.

Once more he strode away into the timber.  Shirley watched him pass out of her life, and gloried in what she conceived to be his agony, for she had both temper and spirit, and Bryce Cardigan calmly, blunderingly, rather stupidly (she thought) had presumed flagrantly on brief acquaintance.  Her uncle was right.  He was not of their kind of people, and it was well she had discovered this before permitting herself to develop a livelier feeling of friendship for him.  It was true he possessed certain manly virtues, but his crudities by far outweighed these.

The Colonel’s voice broke in upon her bitter reflections.  “That fellow Cardigan is a hard nut to crack—­I’ll say that for him.”  He had crossed the clearing to her side and was addressing her with his customary air of expansiveness.  “I think, my dear, you had better go back into the caboose, away from the prying eyes of these rough fellows.  I’m sorry you came, Shirley.  I’ll never forgive myself for bringing you.  If I had thought—­but how could I know that scoundrel was coming here to raise a disturbance?  And only last night he was at our house for dinner!”

“That’s just what makes it so terrible, Uncle Seth,” she quavered.

“It is hard to believe that a man of young Cardigan’s evident intelligence and advantages could be such a boor, Shirley.  However, I, for one, am not surprised.  You will recall that I warned you he might be his father’s son.  The best course to pursue now is to forget that you have ever met the fellow.”

“I wonder what could have occurred to make such a madman of him?” the girl queried wonderingly.  “He acted more like a demon than a human being.”