the
roomy stirrup and steadied his swaying, unfeeling body against her own
little harsh, reassuring, flannel-shirted breast.

Mile after mile through the jet-black lattice-work of the tree-tops
the August moon spotted brightly down on them. Mile after mile through
rolling pastures the moon-plaited stubble crackled and sucked like a
sheet of wet ice under their feet, then roads began--mere molten bogs
of mud and moonlight; and little frail roadside bushes drunk with rain
lay wallowing helplessly in every hollow.

Out of this pristine, uninhabited wilderness the hotel buildings
loomed at last with startling conventionality. Even before their
discreetly shuttered windows Barton winced back again with a sudden
horrid new realization of his half-nakedness.

"For Heaven's sake!" he cried, "let's sneak in the back way somewhere!
Oh Lordy!--what a sight I am to meet your father!"

"What a sight you are to--meet my father?" repeated Eve Edgarton with
astonishment. "Oh, please don't insist on waking up Father," she
begged. "He hates so to be waked up. Oh, of course if I'd been hurt it
would have been courteous of you to tell him," she explained
seriously. "But, oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like your waking him up just
to tell him that you got hurt!"

Softly under her breath she began to whistle toward a shadow in the
stable-yard. "Usually," she whispered, "there's a sleepy stable-boy
lying round here somewhere. Oh--Bob!" she summoned.

Rollingly the shadow named "Bob" struggled to its very real feet.

"Here, Bob!" she ordered. "Come help Mr. Barton. He's pretty badly
off. We got sort of struck by lightning. And two of us--got killed. Go
help him up-stairs. Do anything he wants. But don't make any fuss.
He'll be all right in the morning."

Gravely she put out her hand to Barton, and nodded to the boy.

"Good night!" she said. "And good night, Bob!"

Shrewdly for a moment she stood watching them out of sight, shivered a
little at the clatter of a box kicked over in some remote shed, and
then swinging round quickly, ripped the hot saddle from the big gray's
back, slipped the bit from his tortured tongue, and, turning him loose
with one sharp slap on his gleaming flank, yanked off her own
riding-boots and went scudding off in her stocking-feet through
innumerable doors and else till, reaching the great empty office, she
caromed off suddenly up three flights of stairs to her own apartment.

Once in her room her little traveli