"Good gad, but they're shooting!" gasped Channing. "They certainly are," said the girl, with a giggle. "It must be a still or something, and they think we're revenue officers!" "Wh-what shall we do?" "Run," she quoted him, laughing, and seizing his hand suited the action to the word. She seemed perfectly unafraid. "They won't get our range in the dark. Isn't this exciting?" But the bullets followed them, too close for comfort. "It's the lantern!" exclaimed Channing, and was about to drop it when the girl seized it out of his hand. "Here--don't do that! We'd be wandering about in this ravine all night without it." She looked at her companion in sheer surprise. It was her first experience of the type of man who loses his head in the presence of danger. Her voice became all at once quite motherly and kind. "It's all right. You go ahead and I'll carry the lantern. They're probably too drunk to follow us," she reassured him. Channing, to the after mortification of his entire life, obeyed without demur. "It's all right," she repeated. "But go as fast as you can." Shots were flying thick and fast about the lantern she held at arm's length. More than one grazed her closely. "You great cowards up there!" she cried out in sudden anger. "Do you know you're shooting at a girl?" There was a sudden silence. Then the shouts began again with a new note. "A gal, be ye? Boys, hit's a female down thar. Come on up, gal! Let's see what ye look like." But the shots ceased, and the shouts came no nearer. "Just as I thought--they 're too drunk to follow us," she said triumphantly. "Better get out of this neighborhood, though. Hurry on, Mr. Channing!" "I'm afraid I can't," he said faintly. "You go without me." She turned the light of the lantern full upon him, and saw that he was holding to a tree, swaying where he stood. There was a dark stain on his breeches, just above the knee, which spread even as she looked. Without a word, she turned and began to run up the hillside again. "Where are you going?" he cried. "To get help. You are hurt." "Those drunken brutes? Never!" "They'll help us. I'm a woman." "All the more reason--" he conquered his growing weakness, and put what force he could into his voice. "Jacqueline, I forbid you to go! Come here!" She obeyed, wringing her hands. "But I don't know what to do for you!" she quavered. "Listen! I must walk as far as I can, and when I'm done, you leave me, and run ahead for help. We can't be far from our own cabin now." Channing had resumed his manhood, and it did not occur to the girl to argue with him. He was not a coward. He had merely been startled momentarily out of his self-control, unaccustomed as he was to physical danger. She realized this thankfully. The literary life does not prepare a man for the emergency of finding himself a target for bullets out of the dark.