870 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



wood, and camp-fires, and old longings. There were 

 tears in her eyes, and her foot ceased to tap the iron 

 step, and she leaned more over her arm and looked 

 harder out to sea. Then appeared her lonely life, and 

 the wild imas^ininsjs and romances it had created, and 

 her form straightened again. Her short lip curled, and 

 the tears dried up. 



She thought of her wealthy kinsfolk in the States, and 

 how with haughtiness she had thrown back their proffers 

 of assistance and sympathy. She thought of her ov\'n 

 active life, her self-educated tastes, her superiority to her 

 sex of the same age, not boastiugly, not extravagantly, 

 but proudly and justly. Old dreams of ambition and ro- 

 mance came over her soul, dreams that had been dreamt 

 and re-dreamt, and had awakened — old foncies of a des- 

 perate, whole-souled love, proud as her own, that w^to 

 meet her own and make surrender — that was to woo, 

 plead, strive, and die for her, and be accepted. She 

 tnought of Mike, and in her daring mood as she Avas, the 

 patient, gentle, watchful hunter was swept away with a 

 rush of scorn. Too timid to dare for her, too careless to 

 plead for her, too simple for an ideal, his love was the lik- 

 ings of a man, but no love for such as her. A man that she 

 ccTuldn't understand at times, a man that was too cautious 

 to praise, too weak to dare anything for her, even a refusal 

 — out on such a man ! The consciousness of a secret likins^ 

 that had made her leave Mike so hastily at Bonda Key 

 when he had proffered the cat-skin, made her pride re- 

 volt and her scornincr the bitterer. Then she was too 



