plied hotly. "It
makes me feel angry--as if someone else had done it."

"Done what?"

"Lied about you--said you were afraid of a hideous freak out of a
circus. You!"

The brown eyes blazed on him with the anger meant for his hypothetic
slanderer. And Dick, between the joy with which her annexation of his
honour filled him, and his weakened control, found himself on the edge
of an explosion of feeling; but brought back common-sense and
good-humour to them both with a touch of his antiseptic cynicism.

"Can you swim?" he asked.

"Yes," said the girl, round-eyed.

"If you couldn't, would you jump in after another fool that couldn't?"

"Another? Oh!" exclaimed the girl.

"Well, you would be, if you couldn't. But you can. Now, would you jump
in?"

"No. I should run for a rope or something."

"That's me," said Dick. "Next time that crop-eared, chrome-coloured
coolie shows against the sky-line, I run for a rope or something."

The wrinkles disappeared from her forehead, and once more Amaryllis
slipped her hand through the bend of his arm. She did it as for
friendship or support, but her thought was for him. His rest had been
nothing, and at any moment that deadly sleep might seize him again. She
made up her mind that next time, even should they have to finish their
walking by night, his sleep should be at least as long as that he had
given her.

"I'm a pig to be cross," she said. "But I'm only not cross now because
you make me laugh with your ridiculous good temper. But, Dick----"

She had felt that, without her linked arm, his steps would already be
wandering.

"Well?" he said.

"Next time it's too much for you, I'm going to let you sleep. You must."

He looked at his watch.

"It's a quarter to three," he said. "If we missed that train at
five-fifteen, we should have to wait till ten for the next."

"And it'd be much safer," Amaryllis broke in, "to wait on the moor, than
in a village or a station where people could see us."

"Yes. I'm not clear-headed enough now to see into Melchard's mind, but I
can still calculate on what I know. If he didn't suspect us, he'll go
the round of his pickets, beginning with Gallowstree Dip. If he did
suspect, he'll come this way after us, and run down towards the London
road and look across the moor, along the Drovers' Track from the
hawthorns and the white stone. He won't see us--we are in a fold till we
get a mile further at least. He'll go on towards the main road, b