A feeling of utter helplessness took possession of her; it was as if her experiences, her actions, her very words and emotions, were controlled by an unseen power. Impulse might have precipitated her into the adventure, but since her feet had trod the first stretch of the road to Arden chance had sat somewhere, chuckling at his own comedy--making, while he pulled her hither and yon, like a marionette on a wire. Verily chance was still chuckling at the incongruity of his stage setting: A girl pursuing a strange man, and a strange sheriff pursuing the girl, and neither having an inkling of the pursuit or the reason for it. On one thing her mind clinched fast, however: she would at least sit where she was until some one came by who could put her right, once and for all; rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief--she would stop whoever came first. The arpeggio of an automobile horn brought her to her feet; the next moment the machine careened into sight and Patsy flagged it from the middle of the road, the lines of her face set in grim determination. "Would you kindly tell me--" she was beginning when a girl in the tonneau cut her short: "Why, it's Patsy O'Connell! How in the name of your blessed Saint Patrick did you ever get so far from home?" The car was full of young people, but the girl who had spoken was the only one who looked at all familiar. Patsy's mind groped out of the present into the past; it was all a blind alley, however, and led nowhere. The girl, seeing her bewilderment, helped her out. "Don't you remember, I was with Marjorie Schuyler in Dublin when you were all so jolly kind to us? I'm Janet Payne--those awful 'Spitsburger Paynes'"--and the girl's laugh rang out contagiously. The laugh swept Patsy's mind out into the open. She reached out and gripped the girl's hand. "Sure, I remember. But it's a long way from Dublin, and my memory is slower at hearkening back than my heart. A brave day to all of you." And her smile greeted the carful indiscriminately. "Oh!"--the girl was apologetic--"how beastly rude I am! I'm forgetting that you don't know everybody as well as everybody knows you. Jean Lewis, Mrs. Dempsy Carter, Dempsy Carter, Gregory Jessup, and Jay Clinton--Miss Patricia O'Connell, of the Irish National Players. We are all very much at your service--including the car, which is not mine, but the Dempsy Carters'." "Shall we kidnap Miss O'Connell?" suggested the owner. "She appears an easy victim." Janet Payne clapped her hands, but Patsy shook a decided negative. "That's the genius of the Irish," she laughed; "they look easy till you hold them up. I'm bound for Arden, and must make it by the quickest road if you'll point it out to me." "Why, of course--Arden; that accounts for you perfectly. Stupid that I didn't think of it at once. What part are you playing?" Janet Payne accompanied the question with unmistakable eagerness.