in that I'm a-going to lead ye by, 'thout no more
nonsense."

"Let go that bridle!" yelled the driver, standing up and lashing at him
with the whip.

One stroke caught the young man down the side of the face, and stung. It
was a rash stroke.

"Hold the horse's head, Liz," he cried; and, leaping forward, he reached
into the trap for his adversary. Heeding not at all the butt end of the
whip which was brought down furiously upon his head, he wrenched the
driver ignominiously from his seat, spun him around, shook him as if his
had been a rag baby, and hurled him violently against a rotten stump on
the other side of the ditch. The stump gave way, and the drummer
splashed into a bog hole.

Nothing cows a man more quickly than a shaking combined with a ducking.
Without a word the drummer hauled himself out of the slop and walked
sullenly forward. His companion joined him; and Liz, leading the horse
and trap carefully past the cart, delivered them up to their owners with
a sarcastic smile on her lips. Then she resumed her place beside the
cart, the young man flicked the oxen gently, and the team once more got
slowly under way.

As the discomfited drummers climbed into their trap, the girl, in the
ardor of her suddenly adopted hero-worship, could not refrain from
turning around again to triumph over them. When the men were fairly
seated, and the reins gathered up for prompt departure, the smaller man
turned suddenly and threw a large stone, with vindictive energy and
deadly aim.

"Look out!" shrieked the girl; and the young countryman turned aside
just in time to escape the full force of the missile. It grazed the side
of his head, however, with such violence as to bring him to his knees,
and the blood spread throbbing out of the long cut like a scarlet veil.
The drummers whipped their horse to a gallop, and disappeared.

The girl first stopped the team, with a true country-side instinct; and
she was at the young man's side, sobbing with anxious fear, just as he
staggered blindly to his feet. Seating him on the cart, she proceeded to
stanch the bleeding with the edge of her gown. Observing this, he
protested, and declared that the cut was nothing. But she would not be
gainsaid, and he yielded, apparently well content under her hands. Then,
tearing a strip from her colored cotton petticoat, she gently bound up
the wound, not artistically, perhaps, but in every way to his
satisfaction.

"If ye hadn't gi'n me warnin',