to camp in time."

"No," said Ruth decidedly, "there's no one at home to worry just now, and
I often go about alone rather late. Besides, aren't we having a good
time? We're going a little further anyway before we give up."

She began to wonder in her heart if she ought not to have told somebody
else and taken Thomas along to help. It was rather a questionable thing
for her to do, in the dusk of the evening--to women all alone. But then,
she had Mrs. Cameron along and that made it perfectly respectable. But if
she failed now, what else could she do? Her blood boiled hotly at the
thought of letting Harry Wainwright succeed in his miserable plot. Oh,
for cousin La Rue! He would have thought a way out of this. If everything
else failed she would tell the whole story to Captain La Rue and beg him
to exonerate John Cameron. But that, of course, she knew would be hard to
do, there was so much red tape in the army, and there were so many
unwritten laws that could not be set aside just for private individuals.
Still, there must be a way if she had to go herself to someone and tell
what she had overheard. She set her pretty lips firmly and rode on at a
brisk pace down the dark road, switching on her head lights to seem the
way here in the woods. And then suddenly, just in time she jerked on the
brake and came to a jarring stop, for ahead of her a big car was sprawled
across the road, and there, rising hurriedly from a kneeling posture
before the engine, in the full blaze of her headlights, blinking and
frowning with anxiety, stood John Cameron!

X

The end of her chase came so unexpectedly that her wits were completely
scattered. Now that she was face to face with the tall soldier she had
nothing to say for her presence there. What would he think of her? How
could she explain her coming? She had undertaken the whole thing in such
haste that she had not planned ahead. Now she knew that from the start
she had understood that she must not explain how she came to be possessed
of any information concerning him. She felt a kind of responsible shame
for her old playmate Harry Wainright, and a certain loyalty toward her
own social set that prevented her from that, the only possible
explanation that could make her coming justifiable. So, now in the brief
interval before he had recognized them she must stage the next act, and
she found herself unable to speak, her throat dry, her lips for the
instant paralyzed. It was the jubil