It was getting late. The hours had gone by somehow and as she offered no objections, they “retraced.” For some time now she was silent. Perhaps she was imagining herself too happy for words. Once or twice she cast a sidelong glance shyly at Bob. It was the look of a capricious slave-owner metamorphosed, through the power of love, into a yielding and dependent young maiden. Bob was supposed to be the brutal conqueror. Meanwhile that young man strode along unheedingly. He didn’t mind any little branches or bushes that happened to stand in his way and plowed right through them. It would have been the same, if he had met that historic bramble bush. A thousand scratches, more or less, wouldn’t count. “You can put your arm around me now,” she observed, with another musical but detestable giggle, as they passed through a grove, not very far from the house. “It is quite customary here, you know.” He didn’t know, but he obeyed. What else could he do? “Now say something.” Her voice had once more that ownership accent. “What do you want me to say?” None too graciously. “The usual thing! Those three words that make the world go around.” “But I don’t.” Even a worm will turn. “You will.” Softly. “I won’t.” “Oh, yes, you will.” More softly. Then with a sigh: “This is the place. Under this oak, carved all over with hearts and things. Do it.” “What?” He looked down on lips red as cherries. “Are you going to?” “And if I don’t?” he challenged her. “Finger-prints!” she said. “Footmarks!” “Oh, well! Confound it.” And he did—the way a bird pecks at a cherry. She straightened with another giggle. “Our first!” she said. “Hope you’re satisfied,” he remarked grudgingly. “It will do for a beginning. Oh, dear! some one saw us!” He looked around with a start, his unresponsive arm slipping from about a pliant waist. “I don’t see any one.” “He’s dodged behind a tree. I think it was Dickie. And—yes, there are one or two other men. They—they seem to be dodging, too.” Bob saw them now. One, he was sure, was the commodore. “Funny performance, isn’t it?” he said, with a sickly smile. “Perhaps—?” She looked at him with genuine awe in the temperamental eyes. He read her thought; she thought—believed they had “come for him.” She appeared positively startled, and—yes, sedulous! Maybe, she was discovering in herself a little bit of that “really, truly” feeling. “Oh!” she said. “They mustn’t—” “Don’t you worry,” he reassured her. “I think I can safely promise you they won’t do what you expect them to.” “You mean,” joyously, “you have a way to circumvent them?” She was sure now he had; the aristocratic burglars always have. He would probably have a long and varied career before him yet. “I mean just what I say. But I think they want to talk with me? Indeed, I’m quite sure they do. They are coming up now. Perhaps you’d better leave me to deal with them.” “You—you are sure they have no evidence to—?”