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 coming to pester him with her elfin pranks—coming to plunder his strawberry vines like a mischievous schoolboy—roused all his anger.

“I told you to keep away from here,” said Dry Valley. “Go back to your home.”

Panchita moved slowly toward him.

Dry Valley cracked his whip.

“Go back home,” said Dry Valley, savagely, “and play theatricals some more. You’d make a fine man. You’ve made a fine one of me.”

She came a step nearer, silent, and with that strange, defiant, steady shine in her eyes that had always puzzled him. Now it stirred his wrath.

His whiplash whistled through the air. He saw a red streak suddenly come out through her white dress above her knee where it had struck.

Without flinching and with the same unchanging dark glow in her eyes, Panchita came steadily toward him through the strawberry vines. Dry Valley’s trembling hand released his whip handle. When within a yard of him Panchita stretched out her arms.

“God, kid!” stammered Dry Valley, “do you mean”

But the seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after all, instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry Valley Johnson.