Bud made a motion and Allston fired. He was a sure shot and he had learned well his lesson that when any firing is to be done, it is well to fire first. He aimed at the weapon in Bud’s hand and the gun spun out of the lean fingers into the bushes. The mare jumped and Roxie screamed. The birds in the woods became instantly hushed. With an oath Bud checked his horse and turned as though to ride the two down. But the automatic was still leveled and the brown eyes behind it quite untroubled. “Steady there,” warned Allston. “You ugly, pink-cheeked hornyhead,” choked Bud, “I’ll cut yer heart out fer that.” “Steady,” repeated Allston. “It ain’t healthy here fer strangers, particular when they messes in somethin’ that don’t concern ’um.” “But when it does concern them?” questioned Allston. Bud turned from Allston to Roxie. She shrank closer to her protector which exasperated Bud still more. “Like ’um pink-cheeked and white-fingered, don’ cha,” he growled. Allston lost the last remnant of his patience at that. He pulled the girl to the side of the road. “Now,” he commanded, “you move on.” Helpless Bud turned his horse in the direction of the Kester house. “Not that way--this,” ordered Allston pointing to his rear. His voice was metallic. His words were as decisive as a military order. Men from Gibraltar to Timbuktu recognize that quality. Bud swung his horse and with an oath cantered past the two. Allston stood facing in the same direction until assured by the receding clatter of the hoofs merging into the forest silence that the man did not pull up when out of sight. Then he thrust his automatic back in his pocket. Almost impatiently, he turned to the girl. He found her bright eyes upraised to his. Her pretty face was flushed with excitement--and something more. In the tender, softening light of the moon--lovers’ light--he caught an expression which brought the color to his own cheeks. He breathed a little faster as he allowed his eyes to meet her eyes. Her lips were tight as though she were deliberately making them tight to imprison her tongue. Her head was a little back--a quite unconscious pose of silent supplication. Her body was lax. Her arms hung loosely by her side--the long, slender arms of a girl. To Allston at the moment she seemed almost a product of the forest, like some delicate fern bred in the wild, but possessing an exquisiteness beyond the reach of the most skilled florists; possessing, too, the sturdiness that Nature gives, but which the hothouse sacrifices. Again she reminded him of some of those young women of France at once so intensely human and so instinctively spiritual. There were such faces, passed in the day’s grim work, which still haunted him. So, he felt, this face before him always would haunt him.