e with you at first sight!"

And she turned her face closer to his shoulder and slipped one desperate
little hand into his.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IV

ABOUT two o'clock that afternoon Sayre rushed into camp with his scanty
hair on end.

Langdon, who had been attempting to boil a blank-book for dinner, gazed
at him in consternation.

"What is it? Bears, William?" he asked fearfully. "D-d-don't be
f-f-frightened; I'll stand by you."

"It isn't bears, you simp! I've just unearthed the most colossal
conspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woods
that are incredible, abominable, horrible----"

"_What_ is happening?" faltered Langdon, turning paler. "Murder?"

"Worse! They've got Willett and the others! She admitted it to me----"

"Hey?"

"Willett and Carrick and the others!" shouted Sayre, gesticulating.
"They've caught 'em all! She said so! I----"

"They? She? Who's caught what? Who's 'they'? What it is? Who's 'she'?
What are you talking about, anyway?"

"Amourette told me----"

"Amourette? Who the deuce is Amourette?"

"I don't know. Shut up! My head's spinning like a gyroscope. All I know
is that I want to marry her and she won't let me--and I believe she would
if I had a reliable hair-restorer and wasn't near-sighted--but she ran
away and got inside the fence and locked the gate."

"Are you drunk?" demanded Langdon, "or merely frolicsome?"

"_I_ don't know. I guess I am. I'm about everything else. What do I know
about anything anyway? Nothing!"

He began to run around in circles; Langdon, having seen similar symptoms
in demented cats, regarded him with growing alarm.

"I tell you it's an outrageous social condition which tolerates such
doings!" shouted Sayre. "It's a perfectly monstrous state of things! Nine
handsome men out of ten are fatheads! I told her so! I tried to point out
to her--but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't listen!"

Langdon stared at him, jaw agape. Then:

"Quit that ghost-dancing and talk sense," he ventured.

"Do you think that men are going to stand for it?" yelled Sayre, waving
his hands, "ordinary, decent, God-fearing, everyday young men like you
and me? If this cataclysmic cult gains ground among American women--if
these exasperating suffragettes really intend to carry out any such
programme, everybody on earth will resemble everybody else--like those
wax figures marked 'neat,' 'imported,' and 'nobby'! And I told Amourette