he had expected, the bungalow was alight. In the kitchen he
saw Tom, the Oriental cook, busy preparing breakfast. Blackton himself,
comfortably dressed in duck trousers and a smoking-jacket, and puffing on a
pipe, opened the front door for him. The pipe almost fell from his mouth
when he saw his friend's excoriated face.

"What in the name of Heaven!" he gasped.

"An accident," explained Aldous, with a suggestive shrug of his shoulders.
"Blackton, I want you to do me another good turn. Tell the ladies anything
you can think of--something reasonable. The truth is, I went through a
window--a window with plenty of glass in it. Now how the deuce can I
explain going through a window like a gentleman?"

With folded arms, Blackton inspected him thoughtfully for a moment.

"You can't," he said. "But I don't think you went through a window. I
believe you fell over a cliff and were caught in an armful of wait-a-bit
bushes. They're devilish those wait-a-bits!"

They shook hands.

"I'm ready to blow up with curiosity again," said Blackton. "But I'll play
your game, Aldous."

A few minutes later Joanne and Peggy Blackton joined them. He saw again the
quick flush of pleasure in Joanne's lovely face when she entered the room.
It changed instantly when she saw the livid cuts in his skin. She came to
him quickly, and gave him her hand. Her lips trembled, but she did not
speak. Blackton accepted this as the psychological moment.

"What do you think of a man who'll wander off a trail, tumble over a ledge,
and get mixed up in a bunch of wait-a-bit like _that?_" he demanded,
laughing as though he thought it a mighty good joke on Aldous. "Wait-a-bit
thorns are worse than razors, Miss Gray," he elucidated further.
"They're--they're perfectly devilish, you know!"

"Indeed they _are_," emphasized Peggy Blackton, whom her husband had given
a quick look and a quicker nudge, "They're dreadful!"

Looking straight into Joanne's eyes, Aldous guessed that she did not
believe, and scarcely heard, the Blacktons.

"I had a presentiment something was going to happen," she said, smiling at
him. "I'm glad it was no worse than that."

She withdrew her hand, and turned to Peggy Blackton. To John's delight she
had arranged her wonderful shining hair in a braid that rippled in a thick,
sinuous rope of brown and gold below her hips. Peggy Blackton had in some
way found a riding outfit for her slender figure, a typical mountain
outfit, with short di