ted by yez," Mr. Quilty retorted with equal
gravity. "I will consider the soorce from which ut comes. G'wan out of
here, before I do yez injury."

Immediately after dinner Casey brought up his road team, two wiry,
slashing chestnuts. The Wades occupied the rear seat. Clyde sat beside
Casey. The horses started with a rush that brought a gasp from Mrs.
Wade. Clyde involuntarily caught the seat rail.

"It's all right," Casey assured them. "A little fresh, that's all. They
know they're going home. It's their way of saying they're glad. You,
Dick--you, Doc! Behave, behave!" He had them in hand, checking their
impatience to an easy jog, holding them fretting against the bit. "I'll
let them out in a mile or two. Do you know horses, Miss Burnaby?"

"A very little. I ride and drive; but I like quiet animals."

"Oh, these are quiet." He smiled back at Mrs. Wade.

"Are they?" that lady commented. "Then I don't want to drive behind
wild ones."

A light wind was in their faces, blowing the dust backward. The town
vanished suddenly, lost behind swells of brown grasses. The road wound
tortuously onward, skirting little groves of cottonwoods, swinging
along gulches, sometimes plunging down them and ascending in long
grades on the thither side.

Clyde drank in the sweet, thin air eagerly. The city and her everyday
life seemed far behind. Heretofore her holidays had been passed in
places where pleasure was a business. This was to be different. She
would not look for amusement; she would let it come to her. She felt
that she was entering a world of which she knew little, peopled by
those whose outlook was strange. It seemed, somehow, that this journey
was to be fateful--that she had placed herself in the grip of
circumstances which moved her without volition. Where and how, she
wondered vaguely, would it end?

She glanced at Dunne's profile, shaded by the hat brim tilted over his
eyes against the sun; at his buckskin-gloved hands holding the reins
against the steady pull of the big chestnuts; downward over the
dashboard at their hoofs falling with the forceful impact of hammers
and yet rising with the light springiness of an athlete's foot,
throwing the miles behind them scornfully. And she was dreamily
content.

"You're going to like it," said Dunne suddenly.

"Am I?" she smiled. "How do you know? How did you know?"

"It's largely a guess. I was nervous at first."

"And now?"

"No. This is a plain, dusty trail, the grass