rembled a moment, and then
with a snort of fear whirled and plunged back toward the creek. But
the girl had seen. The colour ran out of her face, the musing peace
fled from her eyes and a swift horror leaped out upon her. In one
flash the soft calm of the morning had become a mockery, its promise a
lie. Here, into the wonder of Life, Death had come.

She had had but an uncertain glance at the thing lying huddled in the
tall grass, but her instinct like Shep's and Gypsy's understood. And
for a blind, terror-stricken moment, she felt that she must yield as
they yielded to the fear within her, to the primitive urge to flee from
Death; that she could not draw near the spot where a man had died,
where even now the body lay cold in the sunshine.

Her hands were shaking pitifully when at last she tied Gypsy to the
lower limb of an oak beside the creek. As she went slowly back along
the little trail the dog had made she told herself that the man was not
dead, that he was sick or hurt . . . and though she had never looked
upon Death before this morning when it seemed to her that she had
looked upon Life for the first time, she knew what that grotesque
horror meant, she knew why the man lay, as he did, face down and still.

At last she stood over the body, her swift eyes informing her reluctant
consciousness of a host of details. She saw that the grass around was
beaten down in a rude circle, heard the whining of the dog at her
heels, noticed that the man lay on his right side, his head twisted so
that his cheek touched his shoulder, the face hidden, one arm crumpled
under him, one outflung and grasping a handful of up-rooted grass with
set rigid fingers.

A sickness, a faintness, and with it an almost uncontrollable desire to
run madly from this place, this thing, swept over her. But she drew
closer, kneeling quickly, and put her warm hand upon the hand that
clutched the wisp of grass so rigidly. It was cold, so cold that she
drew back suddenly, shuddering.

Not even now did she know who the man was. It had not yet entered her
mind that she could know him. She rose to her feet, and walking softly
as though her footfall in the grass might waken some one sleeping, she
moved about the still figure, to the other side, so that she might see
the face. Then she cried out softly, piteously, and Shep ceased his
whining and came to her around the body, rubbing against her skirts.

"Arthur!" She came closer, knelt again