Kennard!"

Rickety Dick threw up his arms. The reins fell from his hands. "Praise
the Lord!" he yelled. The discarded reins slapped the big bays, the
shout in that silence caused them to leap wildly. The tote road was
rough and rocky and the equipage was light. Almost instantly the horses
tore the tongue from the jumper, which was trigged by a bowlder. The
animals crashed around in a circle through the underbrush, leaped into
the tote road, and went galloping back toward Adonia, seeking their
stalls and safety.

Dick rose from where he had fallen and rushed to the girl, who was
clinging to the seat of the jumper. He took her in his arms, comforting
her as he would have soothed a child. He wept frankly and babbled
incoherently. A part of his emotion was concern for her, but more
especially was it joy because she had discovered herself to him.

"It was in me--the hope that it was you. But I buried it; I buried it,"
he sobbed.

For some moments he was too much absorbed to note the plight in which
they had been left. Then his laments were so violent that the girl was
obliged to soothe him in her turn.

"But when those horses rush into the yard! Think of it! He'll cal'late
we're killed. Him penned there in his chair with worry tearing at him! I
must get the word to him." In his frantic care for the master's peace of
mind he ran away down the road, forgetting that he was abandoning the
girl.

But in a few moments he came running back to her. "That's the way it
always is with me! Him first! But after this it's you--and I was leaving
you here in the lurch. But I don't know what to do!" He looked at her,
then at the broken jumper; he gazed to the north and he stared to the
south; in that emergency, his emotions stressed by what she had told
him, he was as helpless as a child.

Her own concern just then was for her grandfather as well as for
herself. Those runaway horses appearing in the yard would rouse his
bitter fear; they would also start a hue and cry which would follow her
into the north country.

"You must go back, at once!" she urged Dick. "Follow as fast as you can.
The horses will quiet down; they'll walk. You may overtake them. You
must try."

"But you!" he mourned.

She lifted the cant dog from the floor of the jumper. "I shall keep on
toward the drive--somehow--some way. This will protect me; I'm sure of
it."

He puckered his face and shook his head and expressed his fears and his
doubts.

"Then I'm