I did not answer and she laughed a little and continued, "But I will not ask you. I will make shift to be content with your silence. Did Dick Parmiter come with you this morning?" "Yes," I answered with a laugh, "but he was not with me last night." Helen laughed again. "Ah," she cried! "So it was your doing, and I have not asked you." Then she grew serious of a sudden. "But since they are gone"--she exclaimed, in a minute, her whole face alight with her thought--"since they are gone, Cullen may come and come in safety." "Oh! yes, Cullen may come," I answered, perhaps a trifle roughly. "Cullen will be safe and may come. Indeed, I wonder that he was not here before this. He stole my horse upon the road and yet could not reach here first. I trudged a-foot, Cullen bestrode my horse and yet Tresco still pines for him. It is very strange unless he has a keen nose for danger." My behaviour very likely was not the politest imaginable, but then Helen's was no better. For although she displayed no anger at my rough words--I should not have cared a scrape of her wheezy fiddle if she had, but she did not, she merely laughed in my face with every appearance of enjoyment. I drew myself up very stiff. Here were all the limits of courtesy clearly over-stepped, but I at all events would not follow her example, nor allow her one glimpse of any exasperation which I might properly feel. "Shall I go out and search for him in the highways and hedges?" I asked with severity. "It would be magnanimous," said she biting her lip, and then her manner changed. "He rode your horse," she cried, "and yet he has fallen behind. He will be hurt then! Some accident has befallen him!" "Or he has wagered my horse at some roadside inn and lost! It was a good horse, too." She caught hold of my arm in some agitation. "Oh! be serious!" she prayed. "Serious quotha!" said I, drawing away from her hand with much dignity. "Let me assure you, madam, that the loss of a horse is a very serious affair, that the stealing of a horse is a very serious affair----" "Well, well, I will buy it from you, saddle and stirrup and all," she interrupted. "Madam," said I, when I could get my speech. "There is no more to be said." "Heaven be praised!" said she. "And now it may be, you will condescend to listen to me. What am I to do? Suppose that he is hurt! Suppose that he is in trouble! Suppose that he still waits for my answer to his message! Suppose in a word that he does not come! What can I do? He may go hungering for a meal." I did not think the contingency probable, but Helen was now speaking with so much sincerity of distress that I could not say as much. "Unless he comes to Tresco I am powerless. It is true I have bequeathed everything to him, but then I am young," she said, with a most melancholy look in her big dark eyes. "Neither am I sickly." "I will go back along the road and search for him," and this I spoke with sincerity. She looked at me curiously.