t a whoop an' a
holler distant nohow."

"Hit's a right purty night," volunteered Alexander, in a voice of vague
restlessness. "I don't kinderly feel like settin' still. I'll go
along with ye, Jerry."

The young man's eyes brightened delightedly. It had been a strain on
his innate courtesy to surrender so much of his moonlight evening with
Alexander, and now he had his reward. There had been an unrest in her
eyes to-night--yet somehow he had felt her nearer to him in thought,
and his bruised feelings were stirring into fresh hope.

Together they started out, and under the spell of the night's
graciousness one of those silences that seem a bond of sympathy fell
between them.

The way led for a while along the high road, then turned off into the
woods, where the rhododendron was massed thick. Here there was more of
the velvet shadow and less of the direct moonlight, but through the
open spaces that, too, fell in filtering patterns of platinum
brightness.

Once Jerry halted abruptly and stood listening, then he went on again.

"I heered hit too," said Alexander understandingly, for in the hills
one pauses to question unexplained sounds in the night time. "I reckon
hit war some varmint stirring."

The route they had taken led along the margin of the bluff, and when
they were close to the elevator, walking single file, with Alexander in
the lead, the serenity broke with the malignant sharpness of a barking
rifle.

Jerry heard the whining flight of the bullet that had missed his head
by inches, and as though in obedience to a single nerve impulse, both
the girl and the man fell flat to the better concealment of the ground,
and edged back into the sootily shadowed laurel.

"We've got need ter separate," whispered Jerry, with his lips brushing
her ear. "I aims ter git inside ther elevator--and hold 'em off. You
hasten down over ther cliff an' work back ter ther house. I reckon
hit's me they wants, but I'll endure 'twell ye brings help."

Without wasting a needless word or breath in argument, Alexander began
noiselessly twisting her way towards the brow of the precipice.
Jerry's heart was pounding with terror lest she be discovered--and to
divert from her an attention that might prove fatal, he recklessly rose
and leaped across a spot of moonlight, making a fleeting target, which
brought from two separate sources responses of riflery.

The man knew now that whoever his assailants might be they were out in