ad. She tripped over roots;
she caught upon brambles. With her last shreds of vanity she was
grateful that he could not see her streaming hair and scratched and
dirty face.

It had grown darker and darker and the moon had vanished utterly behind
the clouds. The air was damp and cold. A wind was rising.

Suddenly their feet struck into the faint line of a path. Eagerly they
followed. It wound on back across the mountain side and rounded a wooded
spur.

"It will lead somewhere, anyway," declared Johnny, hope returning good
nature to his tone.

"But it is not the right way," Maria Angelina combated in distress.
"See, we are not going down any more. Oh, let us keep on going down
until we find that river below, and then we can return to the Lodge----"

"You come on," said Johnny firmly, striding on ahead, and unhappily she
followed, her anxiety warring with her weariness.

What time could it be? She felt as if it were the middle of the night.
The picnickers must all be home by now, looking for her, organizing
searching parties perhaps. . . . What must they think? What must they
not think?

She saw her Cousin Jane's distress. . . . Ruth's disgust. Would they
imagine that she had eloped?

She knew but little of American conventions and that little told her
that the ceremonies were easy of accomplishment. Young people were
always eloping. . . . The consent of guardians was not necessary. . . .
How terrible, if they imagined her gone on a romantic elopement, to have
her return, mud plastered, after a night with a young man upon the
mountain!

A night upon the mountain with a young man . . . a young man in love
with her.

Scandal. . . . Unbelievable shame.

She felt as if they were in the grip of a nightmare.

They must hurry, hurry. Somehow they must gain upon that night, they
must return to the Lodge before it was too late.

A cold sprinkle of rain fell, plastering her middy shiveringly to her,
but the rain soon stopped and the path grew clearer and more and more
defined as they stumbled along it to its end.

It was not a house they found. It was not really a cabin. It was just
three walls of logs built against the rocky face of the mountain.

But it was a hut, a shelter, with a door that swung open on leather
hinges at Johnny's tug.

He called, then peered within. Finally he struck a match and stared
about and Maria Angelina came to look, too. The place was so tiny that a
bed of boughs and blankets on the