u _need_ me, anyway, don't you?" he asked with a tender sort of
roughness.

She couldn't answer because she didn't want him to know that he had
made her cry. She kept her face turned from him and hurried along at his
side.

"Why do you go so fearfully fast?" she was forced at last to protest.

"Because I want to get down from this accursed mountain. I want to get
down into the woods again where I was happy."

"Hugh"--she pulled at his arm--"you are only a child after all."

"Perhaps."

"Well--" She stopped. "Go home alone, then. I'll be no worse off than
when you found me the first time. Pete will come out and hunt for me.
He has a far sweeter temper than you, Hugh, and doesn't think only of
himself."

He swung away at that, resting his hand against a big rock to clear
a hole; then, seeing her about to step down into it, he pivoted back,
caught her up bodily in his arms, and, laughing, ran with her down the
hill, bounding over the rocks, leaping over the crevices, while she
clung to him in fright.

"You silly child!" he cried. "This is the way I'll take you home. Now
I've got you, and I'll punish you well, too." She clung to him and
begged him to stop. She was frightened by their rash, plunging progress,
by his speech. She struggled. "Let me down. I won't be carried like this
against my will. Hugh, let me down!"

"All right!" He fairly flung her from him on a grassy spot. He was about
to leave her when a rushing rattle sounded above them. The boulder
he had twice used to turn his own weight upon was charging down the
hillside! Just in time he caught Sylvie, threw her to one side and fell
prone, helpless, in the path of the slide. He cried out, flinging up his
arm, and, as though his cry had been of magic, the boulder faltered and
stopped. A root half buried just above his body had made a hollow and a
ledge; it had rocked the rolling fragment back up on its haunches, so to
speak, and balanced it to a stop.

"Hugh! Hugh!" sobbed Sylvie. "What was it? Are you hurt?"

She crept up to him.

"No," Hugh told her, breathing heavily. "It was a rolling rock."

"How did you stop it? You must be hurt, crushed, bruised."

"My arm's wrenched--not badly." He had in fact wrenched it slightly.

"Your poor arm! You were so quick, so strong. You didn't think of your
own life. And I've been so cruel. Hugh, Hugh, kiss me."

Hugh took his reward, none the less sweet to his strange nature, in that
it was only potentially e