--"

"What are you now?"

"A pedestrian," she said with determination.

"Now, see," Angus urged. "It's over five miles. Your shoes would be cut
to pieces on the rocks, and you'd be tired out. So you're going to
ride."

"I'm _not_, Angus! What are you--Oh!"

For Angus, finding that argument was a waste of time had picked her up
and put her in the saddle. Thence she stared down at him, and now there
was no lack of color in her cheeks.

"Angus Mackay! What--what do you mean?"

"You are going to ride," Angus told her with finality, "and that is all
there is to it."

"I'm not used to being thrown about like a sack of oats!" she flashed,
and would have dismounted, but he stopped her. "How dare you!" she
cried. "Let me down! Take your hands off me, Angus Mackay!"

"Then behave sensibly!" said Angus.

"Sensibly! My heavens! do you think I'm a child?"

"A child would be glad to ride."

"Do you think you can make me do things merely because you're stronger?"

"Yes," Angus told her flatly, "some things. This, for one."

"Admitting that--you're brutal!"

"And admitting that," Angus returned, "will you act like a sensible
girl?"

For a moment she frowned at him, her eyes stormy, dark with anger. And
then, slowly, she bent low over the saddle horn, and turned her face
away, while a sob shook her slight figure. At which awful spectacle
Angus' resolution suddenly melted to contrition.

"Don't do that!" he pleaded. "Don't cry. I didn't mean it. Come on and
walk. Walk all you like. Walk a lot. I'll help you down."

She turned her face to him and he gasped; for in place of tears there
was laughter, mocking laughter.

"You--you fraud!" he exclaimed.

"You--you bluff!" she retorted. "This was one of the things you could
make me do because you were stronger, was it? Oh, Angus Mackay, what a
soft heart you have in that big body!"

"It would serve you right if I made you walk!" he told her indignantly.

"Yes, wouldn't it? But you won't. I'll ride--if you'll promise to tell
me if you get tired."

And so they went down the old tote road in the wan light of the fall
sunset.

"It's exactly like that day so many years ago," she said.

But Angus, though he agreed with her, was privately conscious of a vast
difference. On that far-away day he had considered the little, lost girl
a nuisance and an imposition. Now he felt a strange, warm glow and
thrill as he walked beside her, and a sense of contentment strange to
him