-oh, if I even had a father," she said, looking
at him with a flash of Conway fire in her eyes--"and you did--you
would not live till morning--you know you wouldn't."

She stood now knee-deep in water. Above her the half-drunken boy,
standing on the rock which projected into the spring, emboldened with
drink and maddened by the thought that she had so easily given him
up, had reached out and seized her around the neck. He was rough, and
it choked her as he drew her to him.

She screamed for the first time--for she thought she heard hoof beats
coming down the road; then she heard a horseman clear the low fence
and spur into the spring branch. The water from the horse's feet
splashed over her. She remembered it only faintly--the big
glasses--the old straw hat,--the leathern bag of samples around his
shoulders.

"Most unusual," she heard him say, with more calmness it seemed to
Helen than ever: "Quite unusual--insultingly so!"

Instinctively she held up her arms and he stooped in the saddle and
lifted her up and set her on the stone curbing on the side farthest
from Harry Travis.

Then he turned and very deliberately reached over and seized Harry
Travis, who stood on the rock, nearly on a line with the pommel of
the saddle. But the hand that gripped the back of Harry's neck was
anything but gentle. It closed around the neck at the base of the
brain, burying its fingers in the back muscles with paralyzing pain
and jerked him face downward across the saddle with a motion so swift
that he was there before he knew it. Then another hand seized him and
rammed his mouth, as he lay across the pommel of the saddle, into the
sweaty shoulders below the horse's withers, and he felt the horse
move out and into the road and up to the crossing of the ways just as
a buggy and two fast bay mares came around the corner.

The driver of the bays stopped as he saw his cousin thrown like a pig
over the pommel and held there kicking and cursing.

"I was looking for him," said Richard Travis quietly, "but I would
like to know what it all means."

The big glasses shone in kindly humor. They did not reflect any
excitement in the eyes behind them.

"I am afraid it means that he is drunk. Perhaps he will tell you
about it. Quite unusual, I must say--he seemed to be trying to drown
a young lady in a spring."

He eased his burden over the saddle and dropped him into the road.

Richard Travis took it in instantly, and as Clay rode away he