their cases struck him like a
soft, heavy blow on the heart.

And so much puzzled was Amaryllis by the strange intensity of his eyes
lifted to hers that she found the gaze hard to endure, and moved
uneasily.

"We ought not to stay here, Dick," she said.

He started scrambling to his feet, but Amaryllis was before him, and
giving him a hand, helped him to rise with a pull of which the vigour
surprised him.

"You're strong," he said, swaying unsteadily for a moment.

She flushed with pleasure at male praise.

"I'm awfully strong. I've felt perfectly safe, you see, ever
since--since I was such a fool and you made me sleep and be sensible."

Dick looked about him, and caught sight of the stone roof of the cottage
where the bees bumbled.

"I didn't get far before I crumpled," he said. "Let's get a move on."

As they walked with their eyes on the cleft knob of the ridge, he
reverted to her last words.

"Not scared any more? Then what price Melchard?" he asked, "and
malingering pig-tailed wenches that hide their faces and sob on their
daddies' shoulders?"

"It was that frightful Chinaman, Dick. Yes, I was afraid then. I was
afraid--afraid you'd----"

"Take him on? Nothin' doing," he answered. "I should've stood just a
dog's chance against the village hero, my dear girl, and the Malay made
just one bite of him. Next time that lopsided serang looms on the
horizon, you won't see me for dust and small stones."

The tone, perhaps, more than the words in which the man of whom she
could not help making a hero seemed to disparage himself, annoyed Miss
Caldegard.

It was as if one good friend of hers had maligned another, and she could
not quarrel with the traducer without falling out with the traduced.

"But it was Melchard's voice that made you take a lump of me between
your teeth and bite a hole in my coat," he went on. "There's a hideous
wound just under this." And he picked at two broken threads on his
shoulder.

"That was just hate and disgust, not fear. And it's horrid to say I bit
you, when you know I didn't. But I was afraid, Dick, that you'd have to
do something to that huge dwarf-thing, and get hurt--and----"

"Well, I've told you I'll bolt if he shows his face," he repeated, more
gently. But seeing her flush and frown angrily, "What's wrong,
Amaryllis?" he asked, and drew nearer to her side as they walked.

But she kept the distance undiminished.

"I don't like the way you speak of yourself," she re