he was up on all-fours and began
to whirl with hoarse, savage bawls of agony and fury. His action quickly
carried him out of the moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared.
There the bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in the
brush, and snapping of branches, as he made his way into the forest.

"Sure he's mad," said Dale, rising to his feet. "An' I reckon hard hit.
But I won't follow him to-night."

Both the girls got up, and Helen found she was shaky on her feet and
very cold.

"Oh-h, wasn't--it--won-wonder-ful!" cried Bo.

"Are you scared? Your teeth are chatterin'," queried Dale.

"I'm--cold."

"Well, it sure is cold, all right," he responded. "Now the fun's over,
you'll feel it.... Nell, you're froze, too?"

Helen nodded. She was, indeed, as cold as she had ever been before. But
that did not prevent a strange warmness along her veins and a quickened
pulse, the cause of which she did not conjecture.

"Let's rustle," said Dale, and led the way out of the wood and skirted
its edge around to the slope. There they climbed to the flat, and went
through the straggling line of trees to where the horses were tethered.

Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest, but still
strong and steady out in the open, and bitterly cold. Dale helped Bo to
mount, and then Helen.

"I'm--numb," she said. "I'll fall off--sure."

"No. You'll be warm in a jiffy," he replied, "because we'll ride some
goin' back. Let Ranger pick the way an' you hang on."

With Ranger's first jump Helen's blood began to run. Out he shot, his
lean, dark head beside Dale's horse. The wild park lay clear and bright
in the moonlight, with strange, silvery radiance on the grass. The
patches of timber, like spired black islands in a moon-blanched lake,
seemed to harbor shadows, and places for bears to hide, ready to spring
out. As Helen neared each little grove her pulses shook and her heart
beat. Half a mile of rapid riding burned out the cold. And all seemed
glorious--the sailing moon, white in a dark-blue sky, the white,
passionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe of
forest-land at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses,
running with soft, rhythmic thuds over the grass, leaping the ditches
and the hollows, making the bitter wind sting and cut. Coming up
that park the ride had been long; going back was as short as it was
thrilling. In Helen, experiences gathered realization slowly, and