d it took him short time to be on his feet and then over the
broken stone wall to the waterside. Suddenly to the girl's delight
there appeared at the back of the roughs the inquiring, sunburnt face of
Lewis.

The men turned and stared with hanging jaws. "Now, what the dickens is
this?" he cried, and catching two of their necks he pulled their heads
together and then flung them apart.

The three seemed sobered by the apparition. "And what the h-ll is your
business?" they cried conjointly; and one, a dark-browed fellow, doubled
his fists and advanced.

Lewis stood regarding them with a smiling face and very bright, cross
eyes. "Are you by way of insulting this lady? If you weren't drunk,
I'd teach you manners. Get out of this in case I forget myself."

For answer the foremost of the men hit out. A glance convinced Lewis
that there was enough sobriety to make a fight of it. "Miss
Wishart . . . Alice," he cried, "come back and go down to the road
and see to my horse, please. I'll be down in a second."

The girl obeyed, and so it fell out that there was no witness to that
burn-side encounter. It was a complex fight and it lasted for more than
a second. Two of the men had the grace to feel ashamed of themselves
half-way through, and retired from the contest with shaky limbs and
aching faces. The third had to be assisted to his feet in the end by
his antagonist. It was not a good fight, for the three were
pasty-faced, overgrown young men, in no training and stupid with liquor.
But they pressed hard on Lewis for a little, till he was compelled in
self-defence to treat them as fair opponents.

He came down the road in a quarter of an hour with a huge rent in his
coat-sleeve and a small cut on his forehead. He was warm and
breathless, still righteously indignant at the event, and half-ashamed
of so degrading an encounter. He found the girl standing statue-like,
holding the bridle-rein, and looking into the distance with vacant eyes.

"Are you going back to Glenavelin, Miss Wishart?" he asked. "I think I
had better go with you if you will allow me."

Alice mutely assented and walked beside him while he led his horse. He
could think of nothing to say. The whole world lay between them now,
and there was no single word which either could speak without showing
some trace of the tragic separation.

It was the girl who first broke the silence.

"I want to thank you with all my heart," she stammered. And then by an
awkward in