ays?"

"Yes, of course," acknowledged Barton. "But--"

"But NOTHING!" stamped little Eve Edgarton with sudden
passion. "Oh, Mr. Barton--won't you please hurry! It's almost dawn
now! And the nice hotel cook is very sick in a cot bed. And I promised
her faithfully this noon that I'd make four hundred muffins for
breakfast!"

"Oh, confound it!" said Barton.

Stumblingly he reached the big gray's side.

"But it's miles!" he protested in common decency. "Miles!--and miles!
Rough walking, too, darned rough! And your poor little feet--"

"I don't walk particularly with my 'poor little feet,'" gibed Eve
Edgarton. "Most especially, thank you, Mr. Barton, I walk with my big
wanting-to-walk!"

"Oh," said Barton. "O--h." The bones in his knees began suddenly to
slump like so many knots of tissue-paper. "Oh--all right--Eve!" he
called out a bit hazily.

Then slowly and laboriously, with a very good imitation of meekness,
he allowed himself to be pulled and pushed and jerked to the top of an
old tree-stump, and from there at last, with many tricks and tugs and
subterfuges, to the cramping side-saddle of the restive, rearing gray.
Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he watched the girl's neck
muscles cord and strain. Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he
heard the girl's breath rip and tear like a dry sob out of her gasping
lungs. And then at last, blinded with sweat, dizzy with weakness, as
breathless as herself, as wrenched, as triumphant, he found himself
clinging fast to a worn suede pommel, jogging jerkily down the
mountainside with Eve Edgarton's doll-sized hand dragging hard on the
big gray's curb and her whole tiny weight shoved back aslant and
astrain against the big gray's too eager shoulder--little droll,
colorless, "meek" Eve Edgarton, after her night of stress and terror,
with her precious scrap-book still hugged tight under one arm
striding stanchly home through the rough-footed, woodsy night to "make
four hundred muffins for breakfast!"

At the first crook in the trail she glanced back hastily over her
shoulder into the rustling shadows. "Good-by, Cave!" she called
softly. "Good-by, Cave!" And once when some tiny woods-animal scuttled
out from under her feet she smiled up a bit appealingly at Barton.
Several times they stopped for water at some sudden noisy brook. And
once, or twice, or even three times perhaps, when some blinding daze
of dizziness overwhelmed him, she climbed up with one foot into