It happened that on these visitations, more than once, Ruth fell in with Captain Allen. She treated him with marked coldness—with actual savageness, Steve declared afterward, but at the time, it must be said, it appeared to have little apparent effect upon that gentleman. Indeed, it appeared simply to amuse him. He was “riding about on business,” he explained to her. He seemed to have a great deal of business “to ride about on” of late. Ruth always declined, with much coolness, his request to be allowed to escort her, but her refusal did not seem to offend him, and he would turn up unexpectedly the next time she rode out alone, cheerful and amused. (One singular thing was that she rarely saw him when she was accompanied by her father.) Still she did not stop riding. She did not see why she should give up her visits of philanthropy, simply because Captain Allen also happened to have business to attend to. She began to be conscious that sometimes she even felt disappointed if on her rides she did not see him somewhere, and she hated herself for this, and took to disciplining herself for it by riding on unfrequented roads. Yet even here, now and then, Captain Allen passed her, and she began to feel as if he were in some sort doing it to protect her. On one occasion when he found her on a somewhat lonely road, he took her to task for riding so much alone, and told her that she ought not to do it. She was secretly pleased, but fired up at his manner. “Why?” She looked him defiantly in the eyes. He appeared confused. “Why—because—Suppose you should lose your way, what would you do?” She saw that this was not his reason. “I should ask someone,” she answered, coolly. “But whom would you ask? There is no one—except one old woman, my old Mammy Peggy who lives down in this direction—who lives anywhere between the old road that is now stopped up and the creek, and farther back is a through-cut to the Bend, which you crossed, along which some of the worst characters in the County travel. They do not come this side of the creek, for they are afraid; I assure you that it is not safe for you to be riding about through the woods in this way at this time of the evening, by yourself.” “Why, I see this path—someone must travel it?” Ruth said. She knew that somewhere down in that direction was the old hospital-place, which the negroes said was haunted, and which was rumored to be the meeting-place of the Ku Klux. Steve looked a little confused. “Yes——” “And if no one is down here, there cannot any harm come to me.” She enjoyed her triumph. “Yet—but you don’t understand. People pass this way going backwards and forwards from—from the Bend—and elsewhere, and—” He broke off. “You must trust me and take my word for it,” he said, firmly. “It is not right for you; it is not safe.” He was so earnest that Ruth could not help feeling the force of what he said, and she was at heart secretly pleased, yet she resented his attitude.