her lips were compressed, and her eyes were opened so wide that he could see them even from where he was. She was poised like a bird ready to fly. “Blair! Blair!” he cried, waving her back. “Don’t! don’t!” But Blair took no heed. She only settled herself for a firmer foothold, and the next second, with outstretched arms, she sprang into space. Whether it was that his cry distracted her, or whether her hair blew into her eyes and made her miss her step, or whether she would have misjudged her distance anyhow, instead of reaching the thickly leaved part where Jacquelin had landed, she struck where the boughs were much less thick, and came crashing through: down, down, from bough to bough, until she landed on the lowest limb, where she stopped for a second, and then rolled over and fell in a limp little bundle on the ground, where she lay quite still. Jacquelin never forgot the feeling he had at that moment. He was sure she was dead, and that he was a murderer. In a second he was down on his knees, bending over her. “Blair, Blair,” he cried. “Dear Blair, are you hurt?” But there was no answer. And he began to whimper in a very unmanly fashion for one who had been so boastful a moment before, and to pray, too, which is not so unmanly; but his wits were about him, and it came to him quite clearly that, if she were not dead, the best thing to do was to unfasten her neck-band and bathe her face. So off to the nearest water he put as hard as his legs could take him, and dipped his handkerchief in the horse-trough, and then, grabbing up a bucket near by, filled it and ran back with it. Blair was still motionless and white, but he wiped her little, scratched face and bathed it again and again, and, presently, to his inexpressible joy, she sighed and half opened her eyes and sighed again, and then, as he was still asking her how she felt, said, faintly: “I’m all right—I did it.” In his joy Jacquelin actually kissed her. It seemed to him afterward to mark an epoch. The next quarter of an hour was passed in getting Blair’s breath back. Fortunately for her, if not for her dress, her clothes had caught here and there as she came crashing through the branches, and though the breath was knocked out of her, and she was shaken and scratched and stunned, no bones were broken, and she was not seriously hurt after all. She proposed that they should say nothing about it to anyone: she could get his Mammy to mend her clothes. But this magnanimous offer Jacquelin firmly declined. He was afraid that Blair might be hurt some way that she did not know, and he declared that he should go straight and tell it at the house. “But I did it myself,” persisted little Blair; “you were not to blame. You called to me not to do it.” “Did you hear me call? Then why did you do it?” “Because you had done it and said I could not.” “But didn’t you know you would get hurt?” She nodded. “I thought so.”