Joe was waiting. “Have we time for the long road, Joe?” asked Alan as he climbed into the cart. “Oh, yes, sir, especially if you drive, Mr. Alan.” “I don’t want to drive. Let him go and jump in.” The coachman gave the pony his head, climbed in, and took the reins. The cart swung out, and down the lane. “Alan! Alan!” Alan recognized Clem’s voice and turned. She was racing across a corner of the pasture. Her short skirts flounced madly above her ungainly legs. She tried to take the low stone wall in her stride. Her foot caught in a vine, and she pitched headlong into the weeds and grass at the roadside. Alan leaped from the cart and picked her up, quivering, sobbing, and breathless. “Alan,” she gasped, “you’re not going away?” Alan half shook her as he drew her thin body close to him. “Clem,” he said, “you mustn’t. Do you hear? You mustn’t. Do you think I _want_ to go away?” Clem stifled her sobs and looked up at him with a sudden gravity in her elfish face. She threw her bare arms around his neck. “Good-by, Alan.” He stooped and kissed her. CHAPTER III If Alix Deering had not barked her pretty shins against the center-board in Gerry Lansing’s sailing-boat on West Lake, it is possible that she would in the end have married Alan Wayne instead of Gerry Lansing. When two years before Alan’s dismissal Nance had brought Alix, an old school friend, to Red Hill for a fortnight, everybody had thought what a splendid match Alix and Alan would make. But it happened that Alan was very much taken up at the time with memory and anticipation of a certain soubrette, and before he awoke to Alix’s wealth of charms the incident of the shins robbed him of opportunity. Gerry, dressed only in a bathing-suit, his boat running free before a brisk breeze, had swerved to graze the Point, where half of Red Hill was encamped, when he caught sight of a figure lying on the outermost flat rock. He took it to be Nance. “Jump!” he yelled as the boat neared the rock. The figure started, scrambled to its feet, and sprang. It was Alix, still half asleep, who landed on the slightly canted floor of the boat. Her shins brought up with a thwack against the center-board, and she fell in a heap at Gerry’s feet. Her face grew white and strained; for a second she bit her lip, and then, “I _must_ cry,” she gasped, and cried. Gerry was big, strong, and placid. Action came slowly to him, but when it came it was sure. He threw one knee over the tiller, and gathered Alix into his arms. She lay like a hurt child, sobbing against his shoulder. “Poor little girl,” he said, “I know how it hurts. Cry now, because in a minute it will all be over. It will, dear. Shins are like that.” And then before she could master her sobs and take in the unconscious humor of his comfort, the boat struck with a crash on Hidden Rock.