.

She was glad, because she did not want to go back to the house. She did
not want to make the effort of wandering away in the other direction to
find that restful peace of woods and water. She moved up a little on the
point until she found a mossy boulder and sat down on that, resting her
chin in her palms, looking out over the placid surface of the lake with
somber eyes.

And so Monohan surprised her. The knoll lay thick-carpeted with moss. He
was within a few steps of her when a twig cracking underfoot apprised
her of some one's approach. She rose, with an impulse to fly, to escape
a meeting she had not desired. And as she rose, the breath stopped in
her throat.

Twenty feet behind Monohan came Jack Fyfe with his hunter's stride,
soundlessly over the moss, a rifle drooping in the crook of his arm. A
sunbeam striking obliquely between two firs showed her his face plainly,
the faint curl of his upper lip.

Something in her look arrested Monohan. He glanced around, twisted
about, froze in his tracks, his back to her. Fyfe came up. Of the three
he was the coolest, the most rigorously self-possessed. He glanced from
Monohan to his wife, back to Monohan. After that his blue eyes never
left the other man's face.

"What did I say to you yesterday?" Fyfe opened his mouth at last. "But
then I might have known I was wasting my breath on you!"

"Well," Monohan retorted insolently, "what are you going to do about it?
This isn't the Stone Age."

Fyfe laughed unpleasantly.

"Lucky for you. You'd have been eliminated long ago," he said. "No, it
takes the present age to produce such rotten specimens as you."

A deep flush rose in Monohan's cheeks. He took a step toward Fyfe, his
hands clenched.

"You wouldn't say that if you weren't armed," he taunted hoarsely.

"No?" Fyfe cast the rifle to one side. It fell with a metallic clink
against a stone. "I do say it though, you see. You are a sort of a
yellow dog, Monohan. You know it, and you know that I know it. That's
why it stings you to be told so."

Monohan stepped back and slipped out of his coat. His face was crimson.

"By God, I'll teach you something," he snarled.

He lunged forward as he spoke, shooting a straight-arm blow for Fyfe's
face. It swept through empty air, for Fyfe, poised on the balls of his
feet, ducked under the driving fist, and slapped Monohan across the
mouth with the open palm of his hand.

"Tag," he said sardonically. "You're It."

Monohan