shoulders and lift of his stubborn young chin, in the very air that he
breathed uneasily, the soft, disturbing air of the May night. It was not
a boy and girl quarrel that was before them: it was something more. It
was the strangest hour that had come to them in their secret treasury of
strange hours that were touched with the glamour of black magic and
swayed by laws they did not know. It might be the darkest hour. It was
the test hour.

There is no sure and easy way through such hours. If they faced theirs
unprepared and afraid, so must the rest of the world, the part that is
older and counted wiser. But this could have been no comfort just then
to the boy and girl in the antiquated buggy, under the untroubled gaze
of the wishing moon.

They were almost on the crest of the hill now. One long, upward slant of
road led straight to it, bare of trees, and silvery in the moonlight. At
the foot, and just at the edge of a thick belt of woods, the boy pulled
up as if to rest his horse for the gradual ascent. At his left, hardly
visible at all to-night unless you stopped your horse to look for it, a
narrow and overgrown road led off through the trees. Tightening the arm
that held her cautiously, the boy looked down at the face against his
shoulder, the faint, half-smile on the lips, and the lightly closed
eyes.

The girl did not move. Her cap had slipped off, and one small, bare hand
clutched the fuzzy white thing tight, as a sleeping child's hand might
have closed on some favourite toy. Her hair showed silvery blond and
soft against his dark coat. With a quick, hungry motion, the boy dropped
his head and kissed it lightly. Then, gripping the reins with a
firmness that no present activity of the animal called for, he left
Green River's only noteworthy view without a backward glance, and turned
his horse into the road through the woods.

For the next few minutes he had no attention to spare for Judith,
suspiciously quiet in his arms. He could not see her face. It was black
dark under the trees, dark as if it had never been light. The track was
wider than it looked, but also rougher. The trees grew close. Branches
that he brushed aside sprinkled dew into his face. The buggy creaked out
vain protests and useless warnings. Finally moonlight showed at the end
of the black tunnel, and the horse, which had been encountering its
difficulties in resourceful silence, made a faint, snorting comment
which sounded relieved, and present