re always friendly and
respectful. But as I came close up to the man who sat on the stile and
who had not turned his head at the sound of my foot on the path, all of
a sudden I became filled with a nameless terror.

The wide shoulders, the rather massive head with the closely curling red
hair; I seemed to recognize them all at once for Richard Dawson's, and I
was as frightened as ever was a hare of the dogs; nay, more frightened,
for the hare has at least her speed. My feet seemed clogged by leaden
weights as they might be in the terror of a dream. Then the man turned
about with a smile which showed all his white teeth and I was sick with
fear.

"It is the third day I have been waiting for you, you pretty creature,"
he said. "I am going to lift you over the stile, and then you shall give
me a kiss for it."

He flung his arms about me and I closed my eyes while I tried to push
him away. I felt his breath on my face, and my loathing of him was so
great that it made me physically incapable of resistance. I uttered one
cry, but I felt that there was no body of sound in it to carry it even
if anybody had been near. But suddenly I heard a furious growl, and I
felt myself released.

"Damn the brute! She has bitten me," he said furiously.

And there he was with the blood running down his hand, while my brave
old dog stood by ready to defend me against all the world.

CHAPTER IX

A ROUGH LOVER

For a second or two we stood staring at each other while Richard Dawson
mopped the blood from his hand.

"Don't you see that your damned dog has bitten me?" he shouted, as
though my silence infuriated him.

"I see," I said with my hand on Dido's collar to restrain her. "You
shouldn't have been rude to me, sir."

He stopped staunching his wound and burst into a great roar of laughter
which had no good humour in it.

"Lord, lord!" he said. "That's the best thing I've heard of this many a
day. Why a little country hussy like you ought to be honoured by
receiving a gentleman's kisses. There, my dear, get rid of your dog. I
don't want to kick her brains out as I could easily do, and as she
deserves to have done for having bitten me. Send her home with a stone
at her heels and come and sit by me on the stile. You shall see how
prettily a gentleman makes love."

I suppose I must have looked at him with the horror I felt for him, for
he laughed again.

"What," he said, "am I so ugly as all that? I can tell you, my dear,