p at the sky
and thrilling to the whispered promises of life; or a pool where he had
fished or swum; or a tree he had climbed or from whose branches he had
shot a gray squirrel. A wagon-road which he might have taken he
abandoned for a trail which better suited his present fancy since it
led with closer intimacy into the woods.

It was late afternoon when he came to the gentle rise which gave first
glint of the little lake so like a blue jewel set in the dusty green of
the wooded slopes. As he rose in his stirrups to gaze down a vista
through the tree-trunks, he saw the bright, vivid blue of a cloak.

"Now, there's a woman," thought Packard without enthusiasm. "The woods
were quite well enough alone without her. As I suppose Eden was. But
along she comes just the same. And of course she must pick out the one
dangerous spot on the whole lake shore to display herself on."

For he knew how, just yonder where the blue cloak caught the sunlight,
there was a sheer bank and how the lapping water had cut into it,
gouging it out year after year so that the loose soil above was always
ready to crumble and spill into the lake. The wearer of the bright
garment stirred and stood up, her back still toward him.

"Young girl, most likely," he hazarded an opinion.

Though she was too far from him to be at all certain, he had sensed
something of youth's own in the very quality of her gesture.

Then suddenly he clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
down the slope toward the spot where an instant ago she had made such a
gay contrast to dull verdure and gray boulders. For he had glimpsed
the quick flash of an up-thrown arm, had heard a low cry, had guessed
rather than seen through the low underbrush her young body falling.

As he threw himself from his horse's back, his spur caught in the blue
cloak which had dropped from her shoulders; he kicked at it savagely.
He jerked off his boots, poised a moment looking down upon the
disturbed surface of the water which had closed over her head, made out
the sweep of an arm under the widening circles, and dived straight down.

And so deep down under water they met for the first time, Steve Packard
with a sense of annoyance that was almost outright irritation, the girl
struggling frantically as his right arm closed tight about her. A
quick suspicion came to him that she had not fallen but had thrown
herself downward in some passionate quarrel with life; that she wanted