"God--will they be all day!" he groans through his blue and shaking lips. He can hear Soames tearing through the wood--then things become mixed. The familiar landscape is whirling round. Now he is beheaded-- no, it is only the cold ice-edge against his neck. Now he is charging an enemy, using Violet, held in front of him, as a shield. Oh yes, of course he is a coward, for did not she say so--here--on this very spot? And--Something comes whizzing at him. A spear--and he is unarmed. Well, he will grasp it. No, it eludes him. Another! He has it-- grasped hard and fast. "Hold tight, old man! Now, are you ready?" yells a voice from the bank. "Ready? Yes--shoot away!" And Lamont, with his half-unconscious charge, is hauled to the bank, he gripping with death-like force the end of the fir-pole, under the impression that he is warding off a hostile spear from his heart. Once on firm ground though, and relieved of the strain, he soon recovers himself. "Put her between the sheets and give her something hot," he enjoins. "Quick, not a moment to lose. I'm off to try the same prescription myself. So long--but it was a near thing." Those who came up had been present on that other occasion that day two years ago, and remembered it vividly--remembered this man's answer, "I daresay I can risk my life for an adequate motive." Here, then, he had literally fulfilled his words. And--now he was married. Clare--no longer Vidal--about to start for a drive, looking lovelier than ever in the sharp English winter air, and the dainty furs which set off the beautiful face, was mightily astonished to behold her proprietor sprinting up the avenue, looking, as he asserted he felt, like a half-drowned rat. "Had an adventure?" he panted. "Must first get dry, then tell you all about it." "Oh, I'm dying to hear. The carriage can go back now. I shall not go out this afternoon." Half an hour later she was hearing about the accident at the spring hole. "You ran a great risk," she said. "Piers, did you never think of me when you took your life in your hands?" "Very much so. But I couldn't stand by and leave her to drown, could I?" "Of course not I was only trying you. But--tell me. Did it bring back just a little of the old feeling? Not a wee tiny echo of it?" He took her hands in his. "Not the faintest shadow, darling. You believed in me from the very first--that other one did not. And besides--" "And besides--what?" "You are infinitely the more beautiful of the two." "I shan't be that long if you go on giving me what you men call `swelled head'," she answered brightly. "Look. There's the post African mail day too." "So it is," taking up the letters which were brought in. "Here's a great screed from Peters. Full of the mine, I suppose."