Noiselessly he destroyed it, setting the heavy stone on the moss without a sound; then he searched the thicket for the next "line," and in a few moments he discovered another broken twig leading to the left.
He had been on the trail for some time, losing it again and again before the suspicion flashed over him that there was somebody ahead who had either seen or heard him and who was deliberately leading him astray with false "lines" that would end in nothing. He listened; there was no sound either of steps or of cracking twigs, but both dogs had begun growling and staring into the demi-light ahead. He motioned them on and followed. A moment later both dogs barked sharply.
As he stepped out of the thicket on one side, a young girl, standing in the more open and heavier timber, raised her head and looked at him with grave, brown eyes. Her hands were on the silky heads of his dogs; from her belt hung a great, fluffy cock-partridge, outspread wings still limber.
He knew her in an instant; he had seen her often in church. Perplexed and astonished, he took off his cap in silence, finding absolutely nothing to say, although the dead partridge at her belt furnished a text on which he had often displayed biting eloquence.
After a moment he smiled, partly at the situation, partly to put her at her ease.
"If I had known it was you," he said, "I should not have followed those very inviting twigs I saw dangling from the oziers and moose-vines."
"Lined deadfalls are thoroughfares to woodsmen," she answered, defiantly. "You are as free as I am in these woods--but not more free."
The defiance, instead of irritating him, touched him. In it he felt a strange pathos--the proud protest of a heart that beat as free as the thudding wings of the wild birds he sometimes silenced with a shot.
"It is quite true," he said, gently; "you are perfectly free in these woods."
"But not by your leave!" she said, and the quick color stung her cheeks.
"It is not necessary to ask it," he replied.
"I mean," she said, desperately, "that neither I nor my father recognize your right to these woods."
"Don't you know who I am?" she said, in surprise.
"I know you sing very beautifully in church," he said, smiling.
"My name," she said, quietly, "is the name of your father's old neighbor. I am Jessie Jocelyn."