gasp of surprise little Eve Edgarton
stopped slashing his arm and, picking up the lantern, flashed it
disconcertingly across his blinking eyes and naked shoulders. "The
roans are in heaven," she said quite simply. "It was Mother's horse
that dragged you up here." As casually as if he had been a big doll
she reached out one slim brown finger and drew his under lip a little
bit down from his teeth. "My! But you're still blue!" she confided
frankly. "I guess perhaps you'd better have a little more vodka."

Again Barton struggled vainly to raise himself on one elbow. "Vodka?"
he stammered.

Again the lifted lantern light flashed disconcertingly across his face
and shoulders. "Why, don't you remember--anything?" drawled little Eve
Edgarton. "Not anything at all? Why, I must have worked over you two
hours--artificial respiration, you know, and all that sort of
thing--before I even got you up here! My! But you're heavy!" she
reproached him frowningly. "Men ought to stay just as light as they
possibly can, so when they get into trouble and things--it would be
easier for women to help them. Why, last year in the China Sea--with
Father and five of his friends--!"

A trifle shiveringly she shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, well, never mind
about Father and the China Sea," she retracted soberly. "It's only
that I'm so small, you see, and so flexible--I can crawl 'round most
anywhere through port-holes and things--even if they're capsized. So
we only lost one of them--one of Father's friends, I mean; and I never
would have lost him if he hadn't been so heavy."

"Hours?" gasped Barton irrelevantly. With a wry twist of his neck he
peered out through the darkness to where the freshening air, the
steady, monotonous slosh-slosh-slosh of rain, the pale intermittent
flare of stale lightning, proclaimed the opening of the cave.

"For Heaven's sake, wh-at--what time is it?" he faltered.

"Why, I'm sure I don't know," said little Eve Edgarton. "But I should
guess it might be about eight or nine o'clock. Are you hungry?"

With infinite agility she scrambled to her knees and went darting off
on all fours like a squirrel into some mysterious, clattery corner of
the darkness from which she emerged at last with one little gray
flannel arm crooked inclusively around a whole elbowful of treasure.

"There," she drawled. "There. There. There."

Only the soft earthy thud that accompanied each "There" pointed the
slightest significance to the word