But with all of their lightness of speech, which, after all, was but the symbol of youth playing up to youth, the prospect was dreary enough, and in their hearts there was little laughter. And the cold bit at them with its icy teeth. A fire would have been more than welcome, a thing to cheer as well as to warm; but a fire here, on the mountainside, would have been a visible token of brainlessness; it would throw its warmth five feet and its betraying light as many miles. So, in the cold and dark they chose their sleeping place. Into a tangle of fragrant bushes, not twenty paces from the Buck Valley road, they crawled on hands and knees, as they had crawled into that first thicket when pursuit yelped at their heels. Here they came by chance upon a spot where two big pine-trees, standing close together companionably, upreared from the very heart of the brushy tangle. Lynette could scarcely drag her tired body here, caught and retarded by every twig that clutched at her clothing. For the first time in her vigorous life she came to understand the meaning of that ancient expression, "tired to death." She felt herself drooping into unconsciousness almost before her body slumped down upon the earth, thinly covered in fallen leaves. "I am sleepy," she murmured. "Almost dead for sleep...." "You wonderful girl...." "Sh! I can't talk any more. I can't think; I can't move; I can scarcely breathe. Whether they find us in the morning or not ... it doesn't matter to me now.... You have been good to me; be good to me still. And ... good-night, Babe Deveril ... Gentleman!" He saw her, dimly, nestle down, cuddling her cheek against her arm, drawing up her knees a little, snuggling into the very arms of mother earth, like a baby finding its warm place against its mother's breast. He sat down and slowly made himself a cigarette, and forgot for a long time to light it, lost in his thoughts as he stared at her and listened to her quiet breathing. He knew the moment that she went to sleep. And in his heart of hearts he marvelled at her and called her "a dead-game little sport." She, of a beauty which he in all of his light adventurings found incomparable, had ventured with him, a man unknown to her, into the depths of these solitudes and had never, for a second, evinced the least fear of him. True, danger drove; and yet danger always lay in the hands of a man, her sex's truest friend and greatest foe. In his hands reposed her security and her undoing. And yet, knowing all this, as she must, she lay down and sighed and went to sleep. And her last word, ingenuous and yet packed to the brim with human understanding, still rang in his ears.