ipitously she lifted her small brown face to his, and in her eyes
he saw the strangest little unfinished expression flame up suddenly
and go out again, a little fleeting expression so sweet, so shy, so
transcendently lovely, that if it had ever lived to reach her frowning
brow, her sulky little mouth, her--!

Then startlingly into his stare, into his amazement, broke a great
white glare through the opening of the cave.

"My God!" he winced, with his elbow across his eyes.

"Why, it isn't lightning!" laughed little Eve Edgarton. "It's the
moon!" Quick as a sprite she flashed to her feet and ran out into the
moonlight. "We can go home now!" she called back triumphantly over
her shoulder.

"Oh, we can, can we?" snapped Barton. His nerves were strangely raw.
He struggled to his knees, and tottered there watching the cheeky
little moonbeams lap up the mystery of the cave, and scare the yellow
lantern-flame into a mere sallow glow.

Poignantly from the forest he heard Eve Edgarton's voice calling out
into the night. "Come--Mother's--horse! Come--Mother's--horse H--o--o,
hoo! Come--come--come!" Softly above the crackle of twigs, the thud of
a hoof, the creak of a saddle, he sensed the long, tremulous,
answering whinny. Then almost like a silver apparition the girl's
figure and the horse's seemed to merge together before him in the
moonlight.

"Well--of--all--things!" stammered Barton.

"Oh, the horse is all right. I thought he'd stay 'round," called the
girl. "But he's wild as a hawk--and it's going to be the dickens of a
job, I'm afraid, to get you up."

Half walking, half crawling, Barton emerged from the cave. "To get me
up?" he scoffed. "Well, what do you think you're going to do?" Limply
as he asked he sank back against the support of a tree.

"Why, I think," drawled Eve Edgarton, "I think--very naturally--that
you're going to ride--and I'm going to walk--back to the hotel."

"Well, I am not!" snapped Barton. "Well, you are not!" he protested
vehemently. "For Heaven's sake, Miss Edgarton, why don't you go
scooting back on the gray and send a wagon or something for me?"

"Why, because it would make--such a fuss," droned little Eve Edgarton
drearily. "Doors would bang--and lights would blaze--and somebody'd
scream--and--and--you make so much fuss when you're born," she said,
"and so much fuss when you die--don't you think it's sort of nice to
keep things as quietly to yourself as you can all the rest of your
d