been sitting there watching her swimming cork for over an hour
when the first light western breeze arrived, spreading a dainty ripple
across the pond. Her cork danced, drifted; beneath it she caught the
momentary glimmer of the minnow; then the cork was jerked under; she
clasped the pole with all her strength, struck upward; and a heavy
pickerel, all gold and green, sprang furiously from the water and fell
back with a sharp splash.

Under the sudden strain of the fish she nearly lost her balance,
scrambled hastily down from the parapet, propping the pole desperately
against her body, and stood so, unbending, unyielding, her eyes fixed
on the water where the taut line cut it at forty-five degrees.

At the same time two men in a red runabout speeding westward caught
sight of the sharp turn by the bridge which the ruins of the paper
mill had hidden. The man driving the car might have made it even then
had he not seen Ruhannah in the centre of the bridge. It was instantly
all off; so were both mud-guards and one wheel. So were driver and
passenger, floundering on their backs among the rank grass and wild
flowers. Ruhannah, petrified, still fast to her fish, gazed at the
catastrophe over her right shoulder.

A broad, short, squarely built man of forty emerged from the weeds,
went hastily to the car and did something to it. Noise ceased; clouds
of steam continued to ascend from the crumpled hood.

The other man, even shorter, but slimmer, sauntered out of a bed of
milkweed whither he had been catapulted. He dusted with his elbow a
grey felt hat as he stood looking at the wrecked runabout; his
comrade, still clutching a cigar between his teeth, continued to
examine the car.

"Hell!" remarked the short, thickset man.

"It's going to rain like it, too," added the other. The thunder boomed
again beyond Gayfield hills.

"What do you know about this!" growled the thickset man, in utter
disgust. "Do we hunt for a garage, or what?"

"It's up to you, Eddie. And say! What was the matter with you? Don't
you know a bridge when you see one?"

"That damn girl----" He turned and looked at Ruhannah, who was
dragging the big flapping pickerel over the parapet by main strength.

The men scowled at her in silence, then the one addressed as Eddie
rolled his cigar grimly into the left corner of his jaw.

"Damn little skirt," he observed briefly. "It seems to worry her a lot
what she's done to us."

"I wonder does she know she wreck