s smaller, sometimes it is larger, but I believe
it is always a circle."

"Isn't it," I queried, "like any other error in life? We go round and
round, and commit the old sins over again."

"That is very interesting," Wanhope allowed.

"But do lost people really always walk in a vicious circle?" Minver
asked.

Rulledge would not let Wanhope answer. "Go on, Halson," he said.

Halson roused himself from the revery in which he was sitting with
glazed eyes. "Well, what made it a little more anxious was that he had
heard of bears on that mountain, and the green afternoon light among the
trees was perceptibly paling. He suggested shouting, but she wouldn't
let him; she said it would be ridiculous if the others heard them, and
useless if they didn't. So they tramped on till--till the accident
happened."

"The accident!" Rulledge exclaimed, in the voice of our joint emotion.

"He stepped on a loose stone and turned his foot," Halson explained. "It
wasn't a sprain, luckily, but it hurt enough. He turned so white that
she noticed it, and asked him what was the matter. Of course that shut
his mouth the closer, but it morally doubled his motive, and he kept
himself from crying out till the sudden pain of the wrench was over. He
said merely that he thought he had heard something, and he had an awful
ringing in his ears; but he didn't mean that, and he started on again.
The worst was trying to walk without limping, and to talk cheerfully and
encouragingly with that agony tearing at him. But he managed somehow,
and he was congratulating himself on his success when he tumbled down in
a dead faint."

"Oh, come now!" Minver protested.

"It _is_ like an old-fashioned story, where things are operated by
accident instead of motive, isn't it?" Halson smiled with radiant
recognition.

"Fact will always imitate fiction, if you give her time enough," I said.

"Had they got back to the other picnickers?" Rulledge asked, with a
tense voice.

"In sound, but not in sight of them. She wasn't going to bring him into
camp in that state; besides, she couldn't. She got some water out of the
trout-brook they'd been fishing--more water than trout in it--and
sprinkled his face, and he came to, and got on his legs just in time to
pull on to the others, who were organizing a search-party to go after
them. From that point on she dropped Braybridge like a hot coal; and as
there was nothing of the flirt in her, she simply kept with the women,
the