to know that in a moment she
would feel as little as Randall Teevan--or as much. She unconsciously
drew herself up at the thought of facing that withered fop.

She rejoiced in the warming air. She would take a long breath of it, and
then the triumphant exit. She stepped a few paces forward to peer about
a low-growing spruce that had shaded her. She had a last fancy for
following the echo of her shot to the farther valley wall.

As she lifted the curtain boughs the sun dazzled her. She would see its
golden points, she thought, when she shut her eyes in the thicket. She
shut them quickly now, to prove this, and saw the myriad dancing lights.

As she opened her eyes again and turned to draw back into the wood there
was imprinted curiously on her recovering vision a silhouette of the
lake cabin. She shut them quickly again, dreading memories she was
forever done with, and laughing in the certainty that the cabin was
miles away. Then she looked again, blinking dazedly in the sunlight, and
the cabin loomed before her across the clearing.

As she stared desperately, her mind roused to frantic denials, her eyes
straining to banish this monstrous figment, the door of the cabin opened
and Ewing came out. She sprang forward with an impulse to shatter the
illusion by some quick movement. But her eyes still beheld him,
bareheaded, turning his face up to the sun. He stretched his arms and
drew deep breaths. He had never seemed so tall. His look had a kind of
triumph in it.

She swayed under the shock of the thing, feeling herself grow faint.
Cooney had betrayed her. Some time in the night, at one of those
confusing bends in the trail, he had turned. He had brought her home.

Ewing's head had turned as she moved; his eyes were on her. She saw the
rapt gladness in his face and beheld him approach her across the
clearing. She managed another step or two and gained the support of a
felled tree. As Ewing came up she essayed a little smile of nonchalance.

"Cooney--" she begun. The word came itself, but she felt easier under
the sound of her own voice and went on--"Cooney came with me. I didn't
go at all. I rode--but you see--" She beamed on him with explanatory
embarrassment--"I took an early morning ride--it was so pleasant--and I
thought I was lost--indeed I did, and I took off his saddle. I left it
right there--" She pointed with the literal exactness of a child in its
narrative of adventure--"right there behind that tree, and th