argument with the drivers. At that instant the wreck blazed into flame.
Rachel had to move quickly to avoid a holocaust in which a hapless
bullock provided the burnt offering. The light of this pyre revealed the
distant figures of Winifred and Carshaw, whereupon the maddened Voles
tried pot shots at a hundred yards. Bullets came close, too. One cut
the heel of Carshaw's shoe; another plowed a ridge through his motoring
cap. Realizing that Voles would aim only at him, he told Winifred to run
wide.

She caught his hand.

"Please--help!" she breathed. "I cannot run far."

He smothered a laugh of sheer joy. Winifred's legs were supple as his.
She was probably the fleeter of the two. It was the mother-instinct that
spoke in her. This was her man, and she must protect him, cover him from
enemies with her own slim body.

Soon they were safe from even a chance shot. On climbing a rail fence,
Carshaw led the girl clearly into view until a fold in the ground
offered. Then they doubled and zigzagged. They saw some houses, but
Carshaw wanted no explanation or parleying then and pressed on. They
entered a lane, or driveway, and followed it. There came a murmuring of
mighty waters, the voice of the sea; they were on the beach of Long
Island Sound. Far behind, in the gloom, shone a lurid redness, marking
the spot where the two cars and the bullock were being converted into
ardent gasses.

Carshaw halted and surveyed a long, low line of blackness breaking into
the deep-blue plain of the sea to the right.

"I know where we are," he said. "There's a hotel on that point. It's
about two miles. You could walk twenty, couldn't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Winifred unthinkingly.

"Or run five at a jog-trot?" he teased her.

"Well--er--"

She blushed furiously, and thanked the night that hid her from his eyes.
No maid wishes a man to think she is in love with him before he has
uttered the word of love. When next she spoke, Winifred's tone was
reserved, almost distant.

"Now tell me what has caused this tornado," she said. "I have been
acting on impulse. Please give me some reasonable theory of to-night's
madness."

It was on the tip of Carshaw's tongue to assure her that they were going
to New York by the first train, and would hie themselves straight to the
City Hall for a marriage license. But--he had a mother, a prized and
deeply reverenced mother. Ought he to break in on her placid and
well-balanced existence with the curt announ