He addressed himself singly to Ola and her chords, moving her fingers patiently, taking the banjo himself to show her just how the thing was done. She was a dull pupil, but a humbly grateful one; and after a while it seemed to Callista that she could no longer bear the sight. She was debating starkly between the desperate course of [202] returning home alone and the yet more desperate enterprise of going in, when a deeper shadow crossed the darkness behind her, and she turned with a smothered scream to find Iley Derf's Indian husband moving impassively through the glow from the window and making his way to the back door. At the sight she wheeled and fled across the yard toward the front gate and the road. She gained that doubtful refuge just as a man on a horse came splattering up out of the muddy little hollow below the Derf place. With another cry she flung about and ran from him, stepped on a round stone, and fell. For a moment she crouched, shivering, wet, bruised, trying to get to her feet, the breath sobbing through her parted lips; then somebody set a not-too-gentle grasp on her shoulder, and she looked up to divine in the dimness Flenton Hands's face above her. There was sufficient light from the noisy cabin behind to allow him to recognize her. "Lord God--Callista!" he whispered, lifting her to her feet and supporting her with an arm under hers. "What in the world--" "I--I--something scared me," she faltered. "It was that old Indian that Iley Derf married. He came right a-past where I was and, and--he scared me." "Whar was you at?" inquired Hands blankly. [203] [Illustration: "He placed the instrument in Ola's grasp."] "In there," returned Callista, pointing toward the Derf yard, beginning to cry like a child. "I was looking through the window at them dance, and--and that old Indian scared me." Twang--twang--twang, across the gusty blackness of the night came the jeer of Lance's banjo. There was no whisper now of "How many miles--how many years?" but the sharp staccato of "Cripple Creek," punctuated by the thudding of dancers' feet as they pounded out the time. Callista felt her face grow hot in the darkness. She knew that Flenton was listening, and that he must guess why she should hang outside the window looking in. "Come on," said Hands suddenly, almost roughly. "This ain't no fit place for you,--a woman like you,--my God! Callista, I'll put you on my horse and take you home." There was a new note in his voice, a new authority in his movements, as he lifted her to the saddle and, plodding beside her in the dark, wet road, made no further offer of question or conversation.