her white face toward his, and through the dimness of
sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she
obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound. "O, brave girl!" he
thought, and threw the ground behind him desperately.

At twenty feet distance he dove like a base-runner, and his hands
closed around the dog's neck. Over they went with the shock of the
onset, and before they were still, the hands had finished their
work. A clutch, and a snap, and it was done.

The dog lay quivering. Red rose to his knees wondering at the
humming in his head. His wits came back to him sharply.

"Did he bite you, Mattie?" he cried. But she had already caught
his hands and was looking at them, with a savage eagerness one
would not have believed to be in her.

"There is no mark," she said, suddenly weak, "he didn't touch you?"

"Answer me when I speak to you!" shouted Red, beside himself. "Did
he bite you?"

She answered him with a sob "No." And then his question asked
itself, and answered itself, although, again, he did not know it.
He gathered her up in his arms, kissed her like one raised from the
dead, and swore and prayed and thanked God all in the same breath.

His old imperious nature came back with the relief. "Here!" said
he, putting her away for a moment. "Take off that dress--that
slime on there's enough to kill a hundred men--take it right off."

Miss Mattie started blindly to obey, then stopped. "Not here,
Will--I'll go in the house," she said.

"You'll take it off right here and now," said Red, "and I'll burn
it up on the spot. I'd ruther have forty rattlesnakes around than
that stuff--off with it. This is no child's play, and I don't care
a damn what the old lady next door thinks."

Miss Mattie slipped off her outer skirt, and stood a second,
confused and dainty. She took flight to the house, running as
lithely as a greyhound.

"By Jingo!" said Red in admiration.

"Let's see you bring another woman that can run like that!"

He gathered some hay and piled it on the dress, firing the heap.

Then he turned to his antagonist. "Poor old boy! Hard luck, eh?
But I had to do it," he said, and gave him decent interment at the
end of the garden; washed his hands carefully and went into the
house on pleasanter duties.

"I'll ask her now, by the great horn spoon!" said he, valiantly.

Miss Mattie was in a curious state of mind. There was an after
effect from the fright, which made