thing wrung out and sun-dried after a
fashion, Packard dressed, swung up into the saddle, and turned back
into the trail. And through the trees, where their rugged trunks made
an open vista, he saw not two hundred yards away the gay spot of color
made by the blue cloak. So she was still here, lingering down the road
that wound about the lake's shores, when already he had fancied her far
on her way. He wondered for the first time where that way led?

He drew rein among the pines, waiting in his turn for her to go on.
The blue cloak did not move. He leaned to one side to see better,
peering around a low-flung cedar bough. His trail here led to the
road; he must pass her unless she went on soon.

Beside the vivid hue of her cloak the sunlight streaming through the
forest showed him another bright, gay color, a streak of red which
through the underbrush he was at first at a loss to account for. He
would have said that she was seated in a low-bodied, red wagon, were it
not that if such had been the case he must have seen the horses.

"An automobile!" he guessed.

He rode on a score of steps and stopped again. Sure enough, there she
sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of
her shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine.
His grin widened joyously. He touched his horse with his one spur,
assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on. She jerked up
her head, looked about at him swiftly, gave him her shoulder again.

He rode into the road and came on with tantalizing slowness, knowing
that she would want to turn again and guessing that she would conquer
the impulse. A few paces behind her he stopped again, rolling a fresh
cigarette and seeming, as he had been before the meeting, the most
leisurely man in the world.

He saw her lean forward, busied with ignition and starter; he fancied
that the little breeze brought to him the faintest of guarded
exclamations.

"The blamed old thing won't go," chuckled Packard with vast
satisfaction. "Some car, too. Boyd-Merril Twin Eight, latest model.
And dollars to doughnuts I know just what's wrong--and she doesn't!"

She ignored him with such a perfect unconsciousness of his presence in
the same world with her that he was moved to a keen admiration.

"I'll bet her face is as red as a beet, just the same," was his
cheerful thought. "And right here, Steve Packard, is where you don't
'crowd in' until you're call