toward her, exclaiming:

"Miss Searight, I believe."

And she, reaching her right hand over the left, that still held the
reins, leaned from her high seat, shaking hands with him and replying:

"Well--Mr. Bennett, I'm so very glad to see you again. Where did you
come from?"

"From the City--and from seventy-six degrees north latitude."

"I congratulate you. We had almost given up hope of you."

"Thank you," he answered. "We were not so roseate with hope
ourselves--all the time. But I have not felt as though I had really come
back until this--well, until I had reached--the road between Bannister
and Fourth Lake, for instance," and his face relaxed to its
characteristic grim smile.

"You reached it too late, then," she responded. "Your dog has killed our
Dan, and, what is much worse, started to eat him. He's a perfect
savage."

"Kamiska? Well," he added, reflectively, "it's my fault for setting her
a bad example. I ate her trace-mate, and was rather close to eating
Kamiska herself at one time. But I didn't come down here to talk about
that."

"You are looking rather worn, Mr. Bennett."

"I suppose. The doctor sent me into the country to call back the roses
to my pallid cheek. So I came down here--to geologise. I presume that
excuse will do as well as another." Then suddenly he cried: "Hello,
steady there; _quick_, Miss Searight!"

It all came so abruptly that neither of them could afterward reconstruct
the scene with any degree of accuracy. Probably in scrambling down the
steep slope of the bank Bennett had loosened the earth or smaller stones
that hitherto had been barely sufficient support to the mass of earth,
gravel, rocks, and bushes that all at once, and with a sharp, crackling
noise, slid downward toward the road from the overhanging bank. The slip
was small, hardly more than three square yards of earth moving from its
place, but it came with a smart, quick rush, throwing up a cloud of dust
and scattering pebbles and hard clods of dirt far before its advance.

As Rox leaped Lloyd threw her weight too suddenly on the reins, the
horse arched his neck, and the overhead check snapped like a
harp-string. Again he reared from the object of his terror, shaking his
head from side to side, trying to get a purchase on the bit. Then his
lower jaw settled against his chest, and all at once he realised that no
pair of human hands could hold him now. He did not rear again; his
haunches suddenly lowered, and with