getting
away again. Your imagination is very much on the warpath to-day,
Lalante."

"Just as you like," she answered, piqued. "Only, I was never credited
with such a vivid imagination before."

She felt hurt. She really had been badly frightened. The comforting
pressure of Wyvern's hand was inexpressibly sweet to her at that moment.

"Oh, well. We'll just take a cast further round," said Le Sage... "No,
just as I thought;" he added, after this operation. "My dear child,
your spectral Kafir must have vanished into thin air. He certainly
couldn't have done so over hard firm ground and left no trace whatever."

"Well, here are two deuced odd things," pronounced Wyvern. "First of
all, the chap who was bitten again and again by a puff-adder, and should
have been lying down there in an advanced stage of--well--
unpleasantness, isn't there at all. The next, Lalante, who isn't easily
frightened, meets with a bad scare at sight of something which sounds
uncommonly like the deceased defaulter when last I saw him."

"Yes--it's rum--very," declared Le Sage drily, replacing the stirrup he
had taken off his saddle. "Well, good-bye, Wyvern."

"What's that?" said Lalante, decisively. "Goodbye? But he's going back
with us. Aren't you, dear? I shall be most frightfully disappointed if
you don't."

The glance she shot at him--her father was busy lighting his pipe--
expressed love, entreaty, the possibility of disappointment, all rolled
into one. Wyvern would not have been human if he had withstood it. As
a matter of fact he had no wish to, but Le Sage's manner was such that
the words seemed to convey a broad hint that to that worthy at any rate
his room was preferable to his company. But he was not going to take
any marching orders from Le Sage.

"Then that you most certainly shall not be," he said, cheerfully,
returning, to the full, the girl's loving glance.

"Of course not," she rejoined, brightly. "I had arranged a little
programme in my own mind, and you are to stay the night. It seems to me
we have not seen half enough of each other lately. Well, it's time to
remedy that and I propose we begin now."

Inwardly Le Sage was furious. He rode on in front grimly silent, but it
was little enough those two minded that as they wended over the golden
glory of the sunlit plains--together. Together! Yes, and the word
covered a haven of rest to both, for then it was that all the world--
with its worries and an