o be expanding until he
filled the whole landscape and surrounded her by dozens, all plastered
with mud and begirt with whitened bones. Then she pulled herself together
again. The stranger's arm was broken, his forehead bloody. She must see
what she could do for him, then go for help.

There was a long interval when the noise of the rain was interrupted by
little groans and exclamations from Phebe, while she tugged and shoved
and pried at the man in the road. He was so very big, so very
unconscious, so very determined to lie with his face buried in the mud
and meet his end by suffocation. At last, she drew a long breath,
mustered all her strength and gave him one pull which turned him
completely over on his back. As she did so, his eyes opened dully and by
degrees gathered expression. He looked up into her mud-stained face, down
at his mud-stained clothes, around at the mud-stained skull which lay
close to his side and grinned back at him encouragingly.

"What the deuce--" he faltered. Then once more he fainted away.

Twenty minutes later, Phebe was rushing away to the nearest house in
search of help. There was but one house within reach, however, and fate
willed that she should find that deserted. She hesitated whether she
should ride on for two miles farther, or go back to her victim, and she
decided upon the latter course. It seemed hours to her before she reached
the top of the hill again. Then she stopped short, dismounted and stared
down the slope in astonishment. Her victim had vanished from the scene.
Only the skull remained to mark the spot where he had lain, two deep
tracks in the soft mud to show the way by which he had gone.

"Well, Babe?" Allyn's voice hailed her, as she rode wearily up the drive,
the water squelching in her shoes and her soaked skirt flapping dismally
about her pedals. "Were you out in all that shower?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you go under cover?"

"There wasn't any cover to go under." Phebe's tone was not
altogether amicable.

"But the mud? It's all over your face, and your wheel, and your hair."

"I fell off."

"Where?"

"Coming down Bannock Hill. I lost my pedals, and my wheel slipped
in the mud."

"Bannock Hill? That's a bad place to fall. Break anything?"

"You can look and see."

But Allyn was not to be suppressed.

"Where's your hat?"

She started slightly and raised her hand to her head. It was bare.

"Oh, yes," she said unguardedly. "I remember now. I must have