had been, and while he would not for the world have
admitted it, he missed Gwen, and her constant chatter.

He was beginning to feel tired, and he would have been glad to sit
down and rest, but lest Gwen should be on her way to overtake him, and
laugh at him for resting, he kept on.

Once he looked over his shoulder hoping to see that she was now
following, but she was not in sight, and again he pushed forward. Not
a bit cared he if Gwen were afraid.

"If she'd kept up with me, she needn't have been afraid. Nothing would
scare her if I---- Oh--oo--oo!"

With a frightened yell, he tripped over what appeared to be a long
bundle, which, however, proved to be the legs of a sleeping tramp.

"Ye little varmint! Walkin' all over a man! I'd serve ye right if I
tied yer arms an' legs tergether, and pitched yer down inter the
valley beyant there!" howled the angry man, as he turned over for
another nap.

Max, believing that the man was chasing him, raced down the steep
hillside, stumbling over roots, and twigs that lay in his way, sliding
on rolling stones, and catching at low hanging branches to save
himself, he at last, from weariness, stumbled, and fell sprawling over
a stump that the darkness had hidden.

It happened that Gwen, becoming a bit timid because of the shadows of
twilight, had risen stiffly from her seat on a low rock, and was
hastening after Max, when she heard the boy's shout, and then the
angry words of the tramp, and quickly as she had come, she ran back
to her perch upon the rock.

[Illustration: "Now, indeed, she was afraid."]

Now, indeed, she was afraid. Alone on a wooded hilltop! Would she have
to stay there all night? Would some one come for her? How would they
know where she was?

She tried to think that Max, on reaching the house would tell of her
plight, and urge someone to come for her, but she knew that Max was a
coward, and that he never liked to tell anything that might cause
others to blame him.

Meanwhile the tramp slept soundly. No thought of the frightened boy
troubled his dreams, and of the little girl who had drawn back into
the shadow of the trees, he knew nothing.

* * * * *

At the big yellow house on the Cliff, there was great excitement.
Mrs. Harcourt was so nearly frantic that the best efforts of her
friends failed to comfort her.

Earlier in the day she had gaily laughed at Gwen's absence at the noon
meal, and if she was at all dist