deed," replied Elsa. "He ran up the road to the village. Good-by,
Kuno. I won't forget you again."

Brent followed her down the steps to assist her in mounting, but she
sprang into the saddle without waiting for his help, and rode away at a
brisk canter.

The farmer and his wife conferred together anxiously about the two mad
dogs, while their little son stood near them, listening intently to all
they said. Unnoticed by them, Rena walked across the yard and passed
around the corner of the house in the direction of the garden.

Something in her manner caught Brent's attention, and in a little while
he followed her. He found her sitting in the garden; and, though she
tried to keep her face turned away from him, its death like pallor did
not escape his sight. He sat down at her side and asked her to tell him
what had happened. The sympathy in his voice went straight to her heart
and won her whole confidence.

"The warning was for me," she answered, "I'm not afraid to die; but
father and mother and my little brother--"

She did not sob or make any sound, but great tears welled from her eyes,
and she was unable to go on.

When she could speak again, she told him that on the day after the
warning, when she found a black, shaggy-haired dog standing near the
dairy door, she put out her hand, intending to stroke its head, but it
caught her hand with its teeth, and left a wound from which the blood
fell in large drops. The dog ran away in the direction of the Barndollar
farm, and she bound up her hand and managed to keep the wound from being
noticed while it was healing, for she was anxious to avoid increasing
the anxiety her parents already felt. Only a slight scar now remained;
but Elsa's account of the mad dogs left no doubt in her mind that she
was in imminent danger of a frightful death.

Brent had once witnessed a sight which rose before his eyes many times
afterward and would not be blotted from his memory. It all came back to
him now once more,--the agonized, horribly glaring eyes, the clinched
hands and quivering throat, and the convulsive sobbing and gasping which
would not cease tearing the wasted frame until death should bring the
only possible help. It made him sick at heart to think that the gentle
unselfish girl who was even then forgetting herself in her care for
others would be seized by those paroxysms of frightful madness.

He knew that many people who are bitten by mad dogs escape hydrophobia
entirely,