"Will you not finish the task you began? You said you never gave in; besides, I can hardly do it for myself." The fact was palpable; it required two hands to disentangle a singularly awkward knot. To deny this would be to confess her own annoyance, so she turned back again. Rather an awkward task with a face so close to your own, watching your ineptitude. And yet she forgot her impatience in a sudden thought. If he had fallen! If that face had had the life crushed out of it! "You ought not to have jumped," she said, impulsively. "It was very dangerous." "Pardon me; I have done it hundreds of times when I was a boy." "Boys may do foolish things." He smiled. "And men should not; but are dangerous things necessarily foolish?" "Needlessly dangerous things are so, surely?" "In that case, what becomes of courage?" She paused, frankly surprised both at herself and him. How came it that he understood so quickly, that she followed him so clearly? Yet it was pleasant. "Courage has nothing to do with the question." His smile broadened. "Thanks. I began by saying so. The fact being that the jump is not dangerous." "No one else jumps it," she persisted. "Pardon me for mentioning that I am an unusually good jumper. Besides-- "The game is never yet worth a rap For a rational man to play, Into which some misfortune, some mishap Cannot possibly find its way." Again something new to her, something which this time sent a thrill of answering recklessness through her veins, something of the mere joy and pride of life made her ask in quick interest--"Who wrote that?" "A man who gave in at last; he shot himself." Marjory's face paled. Yes; men did that sort of thing, she knew. She had read of it, and accepted the truth of it calmly. Now for the first time she felt that she understood it, that she too stood on the brink of the Great Unknown Sea, which might bring her to the haven where she would be, or to shipwreck. Then in quick relief came a new cause for resentment in the perception, as she began to wind up the now disentangled cast, that a large portion of line remained attached to it. In other words, her companion had deliberately cut it, and brought his rod with him; had risked his life not for the sake of his flies, but simply to amuse himself at her expense. "I think that is all I can do for you," she said, in a white heat of annoyance. "Good morning, Captain Macleod." The name slipped from her unawares, and she recognised her own mistake immediately. Her knowledge of his identity being a sort of introduction, from which she could scarcely escape. For his position as laird of Gleneira, owner of the very ground on which she was trespassing, could not be ignored. She could not dismiss him like a tramp. He took the advantage she had given him, coolly.