of great relief. He smiled, breathing hard, but not
exhausted.

"Tight work, eh?" he said cheerfully.

"Jest _wonderful_!" she answered, with a ready tribute.

Then the memory of his embracing arm, the fact that her own arms had
been as tightly clasped about his neck, came to her with a rush,
although, while they had raced across the burning strip she had not
thought of these things. Shyness stirred in her almost as definitely as
it had while she lay hidden at the pool's mouth, watching him and
tingling with shamed thrills at thought of her amazing plight there. No
man had ever had his arms about her in her life before.

But, even while she blushed and thrilled with this embarrassment, she
fought to put it from her. He, evidently, had not thought of it at all,
was, now, not thinking of it. What had been done had been a part of the
day's work, a quick move, made in an emergency, when nothing else would
serve. His attitude restored her own composure.

And gratitude welled in her. She struggled to find words for it.

"I--I'm much obleeged to you," were all she found, and she was conscious
of their most complete inadequacy.

"No reason why you should be," he said gayly. "We got caught in a tight
place, that's all, and we helped one another out of it."

She laughed derisively. "I helped _you_ out a lot, now didn't I?" she
asked.

Again she made a survey of him, standing where he had been when he had
loosed his hold of her, unwearied, smiling, and she looked with actual
wonder. Good clothes and careful speech were not, of a necessity, the
outward signs of weaklings, it appeared!

Joe Lorey, in a dozen talks with her, had told her that they were. She
did not understand that this had been a clumsy and short-sighted
strategy, that, finding her more difficult than other mountain
girls--the handsome, sturdy young hill-dweller had not been without his
conquests among the maidens of his kind; only Madge had baffled him--he
had feared that, now when the railroad building in the valley had
brought so many "foreigners" into the neighborhood, one of them might
fascinate her, and it had been to guard against this, as well as he was
able, that he had spoken slightingly of the whole class. He had
delighted in repeating to her tales belittling them, deriding them, and
she, of course, had quite believed his stories.

But her experience with this one had not justified that point of view,
and the matter largely occupied her thoug