To Mary Ellen there seemed to be three ways open.

She might address this man bitterly, or haughtily, or humorously.

The latter course might have been most deadly of all, had it not been tempered with a certain chivalrousness which abode in Mary Ellen's heart.

After all, thought she, here was a man who was one of their few acquaintances in this strange, wild country.

It might be that he was not an ill sort of man at heart, and by all means he was less impossible of manner than any other she had seen here.