Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/108

90 "and I know it is not being a pioneer, but I hate to see things killed. I eat the flesh readily enough, for I have a bonny appetite, and it shows what a humbug I am. I wish I could be content to live on fruits and honey and milk, and wheat stuffs, of course; things that are given without loss of life. But I can't. Yet the grouse were happy a moment ago."

"And they never knew what had happened to them. Perhaps it is the sight of blood?"

She shook her head.

"No. We come of a fighting stock. I am sure it is not that. It is because I am just a woman, I suppose."

Sheridan found that solution satisfactory. The girl went on.

"My grandfather built this log-house, took up this holding. After you had gone the other night, I realized I had been talking as if you knew just how we had come here. And no one does, though it seems quite the natural thing to us. Would you like to know about it?"

They had reached the house and Jackson had avowed his determination of learning the art of waffling so that he might impart it to Quong. Mary Burrows slipped into the house, leaving Sheridan on the verandah to smoke and think.

Life had been too vigorous the past three years for him to miss the society of women. He had enjoyed the rough but, now that he had met the girl, he realized how he had lacked the smooth. He had never met a girl like her, daring yet dainty,