ice of the West--of Lance--that sounded in his brain:
"Don't fret your heart out, Roy. Carry on."

Having carried on, somehow, through four years of war, he knew precisely
how much of casual, dogged pluck was enshrined in that soldierly phrase.
It struck the note of courage and command. It was Lance incarnate. It
steadied him, automatically, at a crisis when his shaken nerves might
not have responded to any abstract ethical appeal. He closed his eyes a
moment to collect himself; swayed, the merest fraction--then
deliberately stepped back a pace....

The danger had passed.

Through his lids he felt the glare of lightning: the first flash of the
storm.

And as the heel of his retreating boot came firmly down on the path
behind, there rose an injured yelp that jerked him very completely out
of the clouds.

"Poor Terry--poor old man!" he murmured, caressing the faithful
creature; always too close by, always getting trodden on--the common
guerdon of the faithful. And the whimsical thought intruded, "If I'd
gone over, the good little beggar would have jumped after me. Not fair
play."

The fact that Terry had been saved from involuntary suicide seemed
somehow the more important consideration of the two.

A rumbling growl overhead reminded him that there were other
considerations--urgent ones.

"You're not hurt, you little hypocrite. Come on. We must leg it."

And they legged it to some purpose; Terry--idiotically
vociferous--leaping on before....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: Crude arrangement.]

[Footnote 38: Sound arrangement.]

[Footnote 39: Shameful talk.]

CHAPTER II.

"I seek what I cannot get;
I get what I do not seek."
--RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

Then the storm broke in earnest....

Crash on flash, crash on flash--at ever-lessening intervals--the
tearless heavens raged and clattered round his unprotected head. Thunder
toppled about him like falling timber stacks. Fiery serpents darted all
ways at once among black boughs that swayed and moaned funereally. The
gloom of the forest enhanced the weird magnificence of it all: and
Roy--who had just been within an ace of flinging away his life--felt
irrationally anxious on account of thronging trees and the absence of
rain.

He had recovered sufficiently to chuckle at the ignominious anti-climax.
But, as usual, it was the creepsomeness rather than the danger that got
on his nerves and forced his legs to hurry of their