The hour just past had been Ruth’s hour. Without effort, or apparent intention, she had taken and kept the lead from the moment when she returned with Rex. She it was who had given the key, who had set and kept the pitch, and it was due to her that not one discordant note had been struck. Vaguely yet vividly she felt the emergency. Refusing to ask herself the cause, she recognized a crisis. Something was dreadfully wrong. She made no attempt to go beyond that. Of all the deep emotions which she was learning now so suddenly, for the first time, the dominant one with her at present was a desire to help and to protect. All her social experience, all her tact, were needed to shield Rex and this white-faced, silent stranger, who, without her, must have betrayed themselves, so stunned, so dazed they were. And the courage of her father’s daughter kept her fair head erect above the dead weight at her heart. And now, having said “Au revoir” to Monsieur and Madame, and fixed upon a day for their visit to the Försthaus, she turned to Yvonne and took her hand. “Mademoiselle, I regret so much to hear that you are not quite strong. But when you come to Trauerbach, Mama and I will take such good care of you that you will not mind the fatigue.” The sad blue eyes looked into the clear grey ones, and once more Ruth responded with a passion of grief and pity. How Rex made his adieux Ruth never knew. When he overtook her, she and Sepp were well started down the path to the Jagd-hütte. They seemed to be having a duet of silence, which Rex turned into a trio when he joined them. For such walkers as they all were the distance they had to go was nothing. Soft afternoon lights were still lying peacefully beside the long afternoon shadows as they approached the little hut, and Sepp answered the colonel’s abortive attempt at a Jodel with one so long and complicated that it seemed as if he were taking that means to express all he should have liked to say in words. The spell broken, he turned about and asked: “Also! what did the French people,”—he wouldn’t call them Herrschaft—“say to the gracious Fraulein’s splendid shot?” Ruth stopped and looked absently at him, then flushed and recovered herself quickly. It was the first time she had remembered her stag. “I fear,” said she, “that French people would disapprove a young lady’s shooting. I did not tell them.” Sepp went on again with long strides. The four little black hoofs of the chamois stuck pitifully up out of the bag on his broad back. When he was well out of hearing he growled aloud: “Hab’ ’s schon g’ wusst! Jesses, Marie and Josef! was is denn dös!”