a healthy youthful curiosity, and even took the opportunity
of arranging some moist tendrils of her silky hair with something she
took from the small reticule that hung coquettishly from her girdle. It
was, indeed, some twenty minutes before she emerged into the road again;
the vehicle had evidently disappeared in a turn of the long, winding
ascent, but just ahead of her was that dreadful man, the "Chicago
drummer." She was not vain, but she made no doubt that he was waiting
there for her. There was no avoiding him, but his companionship could be
made a brief one. She began to walk with ostentatious swiftness.

Boyle, whose concern for her safety was secretly relieved at this, began
to walk forward briskly too without looking around. Miss Cantire was not
prepared for this; it looked so ridiculously as if she were chasing him!
She hesitated slightly, but now as she was nearly abreast of him she was
obliged to keep on.

"I think you do well to hurry, Miss Cantire," he said as she passed.
"I've lost sight of the coach for some time, and I dare say they're
already waiting for us at the summit."

Miss Cantire did not like this any better. To go on beside this dreadful
man, scrambling breathlessly after the stage--for all the world like an
absorbed and sentimentally belated pair of picnickers--was really TOO
much. "Perhaps if YOU ran on and told them I was coming as fast as I
could," she suggested tentatively.

"It would be as much as my life is worth to appear before Foster without
you," he said laughingly. "You've only got to hurry on a little faster."

But the young lady resented this being driven by a "drummer." She began
to lag, depressing her pretty brows ominously.

"Let me carry your flowers," said Boyle. He had noticed that she was
finding some difficulty in holding up her skirt and the nosegay at the
same time.

"No! No!" she said in hurried horror at this new suggestion of their
companionship. "Thank you very much--but they're really not worth
keeping--I am going to throw them away. There!" she added, tossing them
impatiently in the dust.

But she had not reckoned on Boyle's perfect good-humor. That gentle
idiot stooped down, actually gathered them up again, and was following!
She hurried on; if she could only get to the coach first, ignoring him!
But a vulgar man like that would be sure to hand them to her with some
joke! Then she lagged again--she was getting tired, and she could see
no sign of the coac