She bit her lip, as she silently made way for him, and stood at Tuesday's head, stroking his neck with one small, gloved hand while Haig adjusted the blanket, fitted the saddle firmly, and tightened the double cinch. He was dressed in the nondescript costume he had worn at their first meeting. That same hat, uniquely insolent, soiled and limp and disreputable, was stuck on the back of his head, revealing a full, clean-moulded brow, over which, at one side, his thick black hair fell carelessly. His eyes were calm gray rather than stormy black to-day, but a gray that was singularly dark and deep and luminous. His manner was in the strangest contrast with the two different moods in which she had already seen him--as if the fires were out, as if all emotion and interest had been dissolved in listlessness. And she divined at once that her chance of success was small. "That will hold, I think," he said gravely; and started toward his horse. "It wasn't Tuesday's fault," she said eagerly. Haig paused, on one foot as it were, and looked over his shoulder. "It was fortunate for you that he's been well gentled," he said. "You should look to your cinches rather often when you ride these hills." ("You should keep your feet dry, and come in when it rains," he might as well have said, she thought angrily.) "Yes, it was careless of me," she answered, trying to say it brightly, but really wanting to shriek. "It happens to everybody once in a while," he said. On that, he stepped to his pony, put a foot in the stirrup, and one hand on the saddle horn, and paused. She could easily have flopped down in the road, and wept. Once he had raged at her, once he had thrilled her with a look, and now he was simply dismissing her,--leaving her, as her father would have put it, "to stew in her own juice." She saw all her elaborate strategy, her long vigil on the hill, her struggle with the saddle, her appealing' glances--all, all about to go for nothing. "He might at least help me on my horse!" she thought, in bitter resentment. Perhaps tears blinded her. At any rate--and this was without pretence, and no part of her scheme--she did not see clearly what she was doing. It was nothing new to mount her pony from the level; she had done it a hundred times without mishap. But now, in her agitation, she stood somewhat too far away from Tuesday's shoulder; and the pony, as ponies will sometimes do, started forward the instant he felt the weight in the stirrup. "Look out!" cried Haig. It was too late. She missed the saddle; her right foot struck Tuesday's back, and slipped off; and she fell sprawling on the ground, with her left foot fast in the stirrup. "Whoa, Tuesday!" she cried shrilly as she fell.