“A rendezvous!” he told himself with sinking heart. “She had to get rid of me—she had to hurry—in order to keep a rendezvous.” Her irregular course, her disregard of traveled paths, her assault of this rock heap—everything in the adventure except how she came to be rooting among the poplars now seemed explained. Mentally he flayed himself for his stupid assumptions and sense of personal responsibility for her safety. He turned to descend the way he had come—no need for her to know what a following fool he had made of himself. A certain quality of alarm in what he at first had thought her greeting of the man stopped him. Then forward he sprang, like a fragment blasted from the rock. He closed the gap between and laid on the collar and elbow of the lounger who had accosted her a violent grip. “What shall I do with him—drop him over or run him in?” More calmly than might have been expected, he turned to the little old lady of his pursuit, the while holding the fellow precariously near what might be called, by phantasy of the night-lights, a “precipice.” “You—again?” Whether from dread or relief, Jane shuddered. “Are you everywhere?” “Why not?” His captive ceased squirming to whimper. “Leave me go, officer. I wasn’t meaning no harm to the old girl. Just thought I could help her down onta a safer footing. Likely you had a mother onct yourself. For her sake, have a heart.” “He knows I’m not old. He has troubled me before. If you’ll hold him a moment to make sure that he doesn’t follow, I—I’d be much obliged.” Jane, seeing her opportunity, took it; was off with the agility of a Yellowstone doe; gained a trail and disappeared down the side of the butte. Pape did more than obey her admonition to hold and make sure. That the meeting was rendezvous rather than coincidence persisted in his fears. Odd, otherwise, that she should come straight to the spot where the man was waiting, as if for her. Even in her complaint that he had troubled her before she admitted previous meetings. Perhaps his own second appearance of the evening was forcing both to play parts: had made a sudden change of plan seem advisable to her; would irritate the man into an attempt to deal out punishment for the interference. Would the two meet afterward at some second-choice point? Pape decided to “look in”; by way of a start, dragged his captive under an electric light which cast a sickly glow over the flattened dome of the butte. At once he went on guard against the “fightingest” face he ever had glimpsed, set atop the bull-neck of a figure that approximately matched his own in height and weight, if not range iron. The fellow’s features were assorted for brutishness, nose flattened as from some past smash, lips thick, eyes small, ears cauliflower, hair close-clipped. That a woman of Jane Lauderdale’s type should have anything in common with so typical a “pug” was incogitable.