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"My ideal woman has never been a life-taker," he said coolly "Once, when I was a boy, there was a girl--very lovely--my first sweetheart I saw her at the traps once, just after she had killed her seventh pigeon straight, 'pulling it down' fro was breathing on the grass, and it ed and walked on "She killed her twenty-first bird straight; it was a handsome cup, too"

And after a silence, "So you didn't love her any hed, and at the sound of laughter the tall-sterouse thundering skyward Crack! Crack! Whirling over and over through a cloud of floating feathers, a heavy weight struck the springy earth There lay the big , a single tiny cri beak

"Dead!" said Siward to the dog who had dropped to shot; "Fetch!" And, signalling the boy behind, he relieved the dog of his burden and tossed the dead weight of ruffled pluun, and, as the ees, locked the barrels, and walked forward, the flush of excite his sunburnt face

"You deal death irl in a low voice "I wonder what your ci-devant sweetheart would think of you"

"A bungler had better stick to the traps," he assented, ignoring the badinage

"I ahtfully, "what I think of ed "Wild things' lives are brief at best--fox or flying-tick, wet nests or mink, owl, haeasel or man But the death , "ours is not a case of sweethearts"

"My argu you whether the death ift of death?"

"Oh, well, life-taking, the giving of life--there can be only one answer to the

"I do"

"Tell me then," he said, still amused

They had passed swale after swale of silver birches waist deep in perfu ti easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and on the wood's sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees

"You are feeling the pace a little," he said, co in front of her