shoulders
free; but he was helpless as a baby in the arms of a nurse.

Silver was strong. Joses was right in that if in nothing else.

"He's killing me!" he gasped. "Fetch the coastguard!"

"No, thank you," said the girl.

The young man loosed his prey at last, and sent him spinning forward,
projecting him with a kick.

Joses fell on his face, and stayed there fumbling, while he vomited
oaths.

"Look out!" cried the girl sharply. "He's got a knife, and he'll use
it."

She was right. Joses was busy with that wooden-handled sheath-knife of
his.

Silver took a step forward.

"Ah, then!--would you?" he scolded, and hit the other a tap over the
wrist with the handle of his hunting crop.

Joses yelped and dropped the knife.

Then he scrambled to his feet, wringing his hand.

The brown of his face had turned a dirty livid.

"I see what it is!" he cried. "Assignation. And I spoiled the
sport--what! You and the dandy toff.

_Him and me,
Beside the sea._

_Quite_ unintentional, I assure you!"

He bowed, cackling horribly.

Silver looked ugly.

"Now then!" he said, and advanced a pace.

The girl put a staying hand upon him; and the tout shambled away toward
the Gap, muttering to himself.

Silver turned to his companion. He was breathing deep, but outwardly
unmoved.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "He knocked Billy Bluff out, but he didn't touch me.
Hold your paw, Bill! It's nothing much. I shall put him on a wet bandage
soaked in borax when I get home."

A sound of hand-clapping and hoarse laughter ascended to them from the
Gap.

Joses had slipped Ragamuffin's reins over the post, and was clapping his
hands. Then he took up a pebble and threw it at the roan. The old pony
went off at a gallop and with trailing reins.

Boy watched him calmly.

"I should have thought of that," she said.

Silver was starting off down the hill toward the mocking figure at the
mouth of the Gap; but the girl stopped him.

"You get on and ride up the valley," she said. "Ragamuffin'll stop to
graze under the lighthouse; and you'll collar him there."

Silver hesitated.

"What about you?" he asked.

"I shall be all right," she answered. "I've got the legs of him."

He mounted and went off at a canter, Billy Bluff pursuing him.

The girl walked down toward the Gap, looking ridiculously slight in her
post-boy attire.

Joses had disappeared.

As she came to the mouth of th