"Stand where you are, a minute," he directed. "He's gone. There's no danger. He was as afraid of us as you were of him. He ducked, like a mud-turtle, as soon as he saw we weren't the people he expected. Stay here, please. And face this way. That's the direction we were going in, and we don't want to get turned around. I've got to crawl about on all fours for a while, in the merry quest of the flashlight. I know just about where it stopped." She could hear him groping amid the looser undergrowth. Then he got to his feet. "Here it is," he reported. "But it wasn't worth hunting for. The bulb's gone bad. We'll have to walk the rest of the way by faith. Would you mind, very much, taking my arm? The path's wide enough for that, from here on. It needn't imply that you've condoned anything I said to you, out yonder in the boat, you know. But it may save you from a stumble. I'm fairly sure-footed. And I'm used to this sort of travel." Meekly, she obeyed, wondering at her own queer sense of peace under the protection of this man whom she told herself she detested. The wiry strength of the arm, around which her white fingers closed so confidingly, thrilled her. Against her will, she all at once lost her sense of repulsion and the wrath she had been storing against him. Nor, by her very best efforts, could she revive her righteous displeasure. "Mr. Brice," she said, timidly, as he guided her with swiftly steady step through the dense blackness, "perhaps I had no right to speak as I did. If I did you an injustice--" "Don't!" he bade her, cutting short her halting apology. "You mustn't be sorry for anything. And I'd have bitten out my tongue sooner than tell you the things I had to, if it weren't that you'd have heard them, soon enough, in an even less palatable form. Only--won't you please try not to feel quite as much toward me as I felt toward those snakes of Hade's, this afternoon? You have a right to, of course. But well, it makes me sorry I ever escaped from there." The sincerity, the boyish contrition in his voice, touched her, unaccountably. And, on impulse, she spoke. "I asked you to say those things about Milo, to his face," she began, hesitantly. "I did that, because I was angry, because I didn't believe a word of them, and because I wanted to see you punished for slandering my brother. I--I still don't believe a single word of them. But I believe you told them to me in good faith, and that you were misinformed by the Federal agents who cooked up the absurd story. And--and I don't want to see you punished, Mr. Brice," she faltered, unconsciously tightening her clasp on his arm. "Milo is terribly strong. And his temper is so quick! He might nearly kill you. Take me as far as the end of the path, and then go across the lawn to the road, instead of coming in. Please do!"