t, Emmaline," responded Shirley listlessly,
dragging on her rain-coat, "and the walk will do me good."

On the sopping lawn she glanced up at her mother's window. Since the
night of the ball her own panging self-consciousness had overlaid the
fine and sensitive association between them. She had been full of a
horrible feeling that her face must betray her and the cause of her loss
of spirits be guessed.

Her mother had, in fact, been troubled by this, but was far from
guessing the truth. A somewhat long indisposition had followed her first
sight of Valiant, and she had not witnessed the tournament. She had hung
upon Shirley's description of it, however, with an excited interest that
the other was later to translate in the light of her own discovery. If
the thought had flitted to her that fate might hold something deeper
than friendship in Shirley's acquaintance with Valiant, it had been of
the vaguest. His choice of her as Queen of Beauty had seemed a natural
homage to that swift and unflinching act of hers which had saved his
life. There was in her mind a more obvious explanation of Shirley's
altered demeanor. "Perhaps it's Chilly Lusk," she had said to herself.
"Have they had a foolish quarrel, I wonder? Ah, well, in her own time
she will tell me."

* * * * *

There was some relief to Shirley's overcharged feelings in the very
discomfort of the drenched weather: the sucking pull of the wet clay on
her boots and the flirt of the drops on her cheeks and hair. She thrust
her dog-skin gloves into her pocket and held her arms outstretched to
let the wind blow through her fingers. The moisture clung in damp
wreaths to her hair and rolled in great drops down her coat as she went.

The wildest, most secluded walks had always drawn her most and she
instinctively chose one of these to-day. It was the road whereon
squatted Mad Anthony's whitewashed cabin. "Dah's er man gwine look in
dem eyes, honey, en gwine make 'em cry en cry." She had forgotten the
incident of that day, when he had read her fortune, but now the
quavering prophecy came back to her with a shivering sense of reality.
"Fo' dah's fiah en she ain' afeahd, en dah's watah en she ain' afeahd.
Et's de thing whut eat de ha'at outen de breas'--dat whut she afeahd
of!" If it were only fire and water that threatened her!

She struck her hands together with an inarticulate cry. She remembered
the laugh in Valiant's eyes as they had plant