. A figure passed the gap. She saw it quite plainly. The
big, broad-shouldered figure of a man with fair hair and blue eyes. It
was Big Brother Bill. Instinctively she drew back, entirely forgetful
of the fallen tree trunks. Then tragedy came upon her.

How it happened she didn't know. She afterward felt she never wanted
to know. Something seemed to hit her sharply at the back of the knees.
She remembered that they bent under her. Then, in a second, she found
herself sitting upon the ground with her feet sticking up in the air
in a perfectly ridiculous manner, and, by some horribly mysterious
means, with the support of a fallen sapling pine holding them there.

At the moment of impact she was too paralyzed with fear to move, then
as a sharp exclamation in a man's deep voice reached her, a wild
terror seized upon her, and, with a violent effort she rolled herself
clear of the log, scrambled to her feet, her dainty frock stained and
torn with her tumble, and fled for dear life down the hill.

Faster and faster she ran, breaking her way through all obstructing
foliage utterly regardless of the rents she was making in the soft
material of her frock. She felt she dared not pause for anything with
that man behind her. She felt that she hated him worse than anybody in
the world. To think that he must have witnessed her discomfiture, and
worse than all her two absurd feet sticking up in the air like--like
signposts. It was too awful to contemplate.

She did not pause for breath until she reached the footbridge. Then a
fresh panic set in. She had left the books behind. They were at the
place where she had fallen.

Oh dear, oh dear! He would find them. He would find her name in them.
He would take them back to Charlie, and her last hope would be gone.
She would undoubtedly be recognized!

She wanted to burst into tears, then and there, but something inside
her would not permit her such relief. Instead a whimsical humor came
to her aid and she laughed.

At first her laugh was pathetically near to tears, but the moment of
doubt passed, and the whole humor of the situation took hold of her.
She hurried on home, laughing as she went; and, desperately near
hysterics, she at last burst into her sister's presence.

Kate was on her feet in an instant.

"Oh, Kate," she cried, with a wild sort of laughter. "Behold the man
hunter--hunted!" Then she flung herself into a chair, gasping for
breath.

Kate's anxious eyes took in some