Their heads were close together, their fingers often met; he would have liked to say something, but he could only add: “Are you sure you will feel quite safe? It is a little steeper as we near the bank.” “You can hold me,” she replied simply, with a superbly unconscious lifting of her arm, as she yielded her waist to him again, but without raising her eyes. He did,--holding her rather tightly, I fear, as they clambered up the remaining slope, for it seemed to him as a last embrace. As he lifted her to the road bank, the shouts came nearer; and glancing up, he saw two men and a woman running down the hill toward them. He turned to Eugenia. In that instant she had slipped the tattered dust-coat from her shoulder, thrown it over her arm, set her hat straight, and was calmly awaiting them with a self-possession and coolness that seemed to shame their excitement. He noticed, too, with the quick perception of unimportant things which comes to some natures at such moments, that she had plucked a sprig of wild myrtle from the mountain side, and was wearing it on her breast. “Goodness Heavens! Genie! What has happened! Where have you been?” “Eugenia! this is perfect madness!” began the elder man didactically. “You have alarmed us beyond measure--kept the stage waiting, and now it is gone!” “Genie! Look here, I say! We've been hunting for you everywhere. What's up?” said the younger man, with brotherly brusqueness. As these questions were all uttered in the same breath, Eugenia replied to them collectively. “It was so hot that I kept along the bank here, while you were on the other side. I heard the trickle of water somewhere down there, and searching for it my foot slipped. This gentleman”--she indicated Bray--“was on a little sort of a trail there, and assisted me back to the road again.” The two men and the woman turned and stared at Bray with a look of curiosity that changed quickly into a half contemptuous unconcern. They saw a youngish sort of man, with a long mustache, a two days' growth of beard, a not overclean face, that was further streaked with red on the temple, a torn flannel shirt, that showed a very white shoulder beside a sunburnt throat and neck, and soiled white trousers stuck into muddy high boots--in fact, the picture of a broken-down miner. But their unconcern was as speedily changed again into resentment at the perfect ease and equality with which he regarded them, a regard the more exasperating as it was not without a suspicion of his perception of some satire or humor in the situation. “Ahem! very much obliged, I am sure. I--er”-- “The lady has thanked me,” interrupted Bray, with a smile. “Did you fall far?” said the younger man to Eugenia, ignoring Bray. “Not far,” she answered, with a half appealing look at Bray. “Only a few feet,” added the latter, with prompt mendacity, “just a little slip down.”