SNIPERS Dinner was ended. Darrel lay on a lounge in the sitting-room, a victim against his will to romance. Beside him on a low footstool sat Valentine, reading aloud to him when she thought he ought to be read to, fussing with his pillows when she chose to fuss, taking his cigarette from his lips and inserting a thermometer at intervals, and always calmly indifferent to his protests or to her mother's laughter. For she had heard somewhere that a wild boar's teeth poisoned like a lion's mauling; and the sudden revelation of a hero under the shattered shell of modesty and self-depreciation which so long obscured the romantic qualities in this young man determined her to make him continue to play a rôle which every girl adores--the rôle of the stricken brave. Never again could Darrel explain to her how timidity, caution, and a native and unfeigned stupidity invariably characterized his behaviour at psychological moments. For Guild had told her all about this young man's cool resourcefulness and almost nerveless courage during those hair-raising days in Sonora when the great Yo Espero ranch was besieged, and every American prisoner taken was always reported "Shot in attempting to escape." She had never even known that Darrel had been in Mexico until Guild told her about their joint mining enterprise and how, under a spineless Administration, disaster had wiped out their property, and had nearly done the same for them. "Mother," said the girl, "I think I'll look at his shin again." "Nonsense!" protested Darrel, struggling to sit up, and being checked by a soft but firm little hand flat against his chest. "I don't want to have my shin looked at," he repeated helplessly. "Mother, I am going to change the dressing. Will you help?" "For the love of Mike----" "Be quiet, Harry!" "Then make Guild go out of the room! He's laughing at me now!" Karen was laughing, too, and now she turned to Guild: "Come," she said, smilingly; "we are not welcome here. Also I do want you to see the rose garden by star-light." And to Mrs. Courland, naïvely: "May we please be excused to see your lovely garden?" The pretty young matron smiled and nodded, busy with the box of first-aid bandages for which Valentine was now waiting. So Karen and Guild went out together into the star-light, across the terrace and lawns and down along a dim avenue of beeches. The night was aromatic with the clean sweet odour of the forest; a few leaves had fallen, merely a tracery of delicate burnt-gold under foot. Karen turned to the right between tall clipped hedges. Mossy steps of stone terminated the alley and led down into an old sunken garden with wall and pool and ghostly benches of stone, and its thousands of roses perfuming the still air.