ly, with unexpected jauntiness, swung
into the road again.

It was technically a road, and it was the wreck of a very good road, but
it was not in much better shape than the track they had reached it by.
Aspiring amateurs had sketched it and camera fiends haunted it in their
day. It was Colonel Everard's favourite bridle path, which naturally
prevented repairs upon it. But before the railroad went through it had
been Green River's only link with a wider world. Now a better built but
more circuitous road had replaced it, designed for motoring. No motors
ever penetrated here, and few carriages. It was left to the ghosts of
ancient traffic, if they ventured here. The glancing moonlight under the
close-growing trees might have been full of them to-night.

But the boy was not looking for ghosts or interested in the history of
the road or its charm, as he hurried his high-shouldered horse along it,
still responding jauntily. He squared his chin more stubbornly than
ever, and muttered encouragingly to the horse, and reached for his
battered whip. Round this corner, beyond this milestone, the stage
drivers used to make up time when the mail was late. A generous mile of
almost level road curved ahead of Neil into the moonlight, a fairly
clean bit of going even now. Judith and Neil were on the old coaching
road to Wells.

Neil reached for his whip, but did not take it out of the socket. A
small hand closed over his. The head on his shoulder did not move, but
dark eyes, watchful and deliberate, opened and looked up at him quietly.

"Now," said a cool little voice, "you can take me home."

"You're awake?"

"Of course."

"Then why----"

"I waited to see where you were going, and what you were going to do,"
explained Judith simply. They were covering the banner stretch of road
at a rate the old stage drivers had never emulated. Judith pushed Neil's
arm away, and sat straight and looked at him. Her cheeks were gloriously
flushed with the quick motion, and her soft, tumbled hair had broken
into baby curls round her forehead, but her eyes were a woman's dark,
unforgiving eyes. Neil gave her one furtive glance, and looked away.

"I told you to take me home," she said.

He made a muttered reply, inarticulate, so that it would have been hard
to tell whether it was really addressed to Judith or the horse, and bent
forward over the reins.

The colour deepened in Judith's cheeks, her soft lips tightened into a
straight line that