"Yes. I don't know what nor didn't stop to see. The transmission went, I knew that. The engine was still threshing and pounding when we took to our heels. We could hear it and see the two lights coming and we ran--Lord, how we ran! It seems humorous now, but it wasn't humorous then. There was a fortune at stake and a big one; for a claim belongs to the chap who puts up the monuments. We ran straight ahead into the night, until we couldn't run another foot; and then we walked, walked, ten miles if an inch, until the two lights of Old Reliable became one, and then went out of sight entirely. Then we lay down and panted and waited for daylight.... That's about all, I guess." "They didn't follow you, then?" The girl was sitting up now, the brown eyes wide open. "They couldn't. A hound might have done so, but a human being couldn't that night." Roberts dropped back to the grass, again avoiding the rift of light. "At daylight Evans got his bearings, and that day we found the claim, built our monuments, tacked up the notice and the rest. I learned afterwards there were six men in the machine behind; but I never saw any of them--until the day I left. They made me an offer then." "And Old Reliable?" Roberts hesitated, then he laughed oddly. "I paid a parting visit there too. The remains weren't decent junk when the same six got through expressing their feelings that night." CHAPTER V FULFILMENT An hour had passed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating, barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born. Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and the girl idling beside. "Poverty, work, subservience," conversation had drifted where it would, at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty years; "poverty, work, subservience," the man had paused there to laugh, the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could express. "Yes; they're old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I'm not likely to forget the contrast they've made, ever, no matter what the future holds." "You've not forgotten, then, what's past,--overlooked it? Isn't it better to forget, sometimes,--some things?" "Forget?" The man was looking straight up into space. "I wish I could forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me--hard at times, and I don't want to be hard. But I can't ever. Memory is branded in too deeply." The girl was picking a blade of grass to pieces, bit by bit. "I'm disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished," she said low. "That's what has made me afraid of you sometimes." The man did not stir. "Are you afraid of me sometimes, really?" he asked. "Yes, horribly--as much afraid as when we were coming out here to-day." "I'm sorry, Elice, sorry for several reasons. Most of all because I love you."