He gave a start. "I'll tell you what," he said as Bina failed to follow up her opening, "I 'll just pull together a lot of these dry leaves, and make you up a bed, Bina. You'll go to sleep in a jiffy in this air, and it will be morning before you know it."

Bina said not a word. She merely watched Roddy with a hopeless feeling. He heaped the leaves very neatly. Robins could not have arranged them in a more professional manner. Over the heap, which horridly suggested a woodland grave to Bina, he spread the gay saddleblankets. He then pulled off his coat and tossed it to her.

"Button that around you, Bina," he said in the tone of a conscientious nurse. "It gets cold toward morning."

There ensued half an hour of intense silence, bewildered on Bina's part. Roddy merely did not feel like talking, and was grateful to Bina for keeping quiet.

As he stared so steadily ahead, he was neither admiring the stars, which now glinted through an opening in the clouds, nor the effects of firelight among the leaves. He was reflecting on the scrape Bina had got him into with Ivor, who in an old-fashioned way was exigent where the women of his family were in question. He knew perfectly well how he was going to appear to his father as a stupid fellow who did n't know his own mountains and who could n't take decent care of a little girl. Wincing inwardly, Roddy bent to throw more twigs on the fire.

"Better try to sleep, Bina," he advised. "I-I don't want to go to sleep," said Bina in a grieved voice. Her eyes brimmed. Two tears rolled heavily down her cheeks.

"What do you want, then?" asked Roddy in a puzzled way.

"To-to t-talk," quivered Bina.

"All right," said Roddy, making the effort of his life to be reasonable and kind. "All right." And after a wait he added, "Why don't you go ahead?"

"I don't want to," said Bina, almost violently. She lay back on the bed of leaves and gazed up at the chilly stars,

which seemed not quite so far away as Roddy.

Roddy kept casting thoughtful glances at Bina. He concluded that she was tired, and nervous about being lost, and that the sooner she got off to sleep the better for them both. He drew a long breath of relief when her soft, regular breathing convinced him that she was off at last. He went back to his own thoughts, and for the most part forgot the little curled-up. figure opposite. Toward morning he must have dozed, head on arms, for he roused at some breaking of bushes, and looked, to find his horse gone. As he stood glancing about him, a barking of dogs assailed his ears. He climbed a small ridge to the right and saw that it came from a cabin close at hand-old Chittum's cabin. Roddy got red all to himself there in the stealing dawn. Had they ridden on for ten minutes they would have reached the cabin and have been put in their way. Everything was conspiring to make him. look like a perfect fool.

"Dolt!" he muttered to himself. "Chump!"

He turned at a sound to see Bina peeping at him like a dryad newly emerged from her oak.

"What in the world are you talking to yourself for, Roddy?" asked Bina.

Without replying, Roddy descended the little ridge and saddled Dolly and put Bina into her saddle.

"My horse got loose," he told her then. He added, "See if there is n't an apple for your breakfast in one of my pockets there."

Bina found the apple, broke it in half, and proffered one of the halves to Roddy. He colored with annoyance and made a vexed gesture of rejection. With a swing of the arm which expressed many emotions, Bina flung both halves high and far. One fell short of the world's edge and rolled back toward them. Roddy picked up and gave it to Dolly.

it

As they neared the highway, they sighted Roddy's white horse a mile ahead. Beyond him appeared some sort of procession of which they failed to sense the significance. They slid on down, Roddy lead

ing Dolly at arm's-length. At the opening into the main road they met the procession. Roddy flared scarlet as he took it in.

Ivor headed it, in the cart, with his gun between his knees; there had been tales of bears seen in the mountains not long before. Behind rode half the neighborhood, it seemed to Roddy, though there were only a few youngsters who had ridden over to Cedarcliff the evening before for an impromptu frolic. The dogs and Roddy's captured mount made a tail to the procession, which dissolved and gathered about Bina and Roddy.

A look from Ivor brought Roddy to the side of the cart.

"I thought you could be trusted to take care of a girl," said Ivor. His contemptuous tone carried cruelly.

Roddy turned away, white to the clamped lips, from which wild horses could have dragged no explanation after that injustice from Ivor. Every one talked. kindly and loudly and all together. Roddy's eyes were hard as he watched them put Bina into the cart and give her a spectacular and totally unnecessary sip of brandy. He held his head high as he went to get his horse from Geoff.

"It was every bit my fault, Uncle Roderick," Bina was saying. Her voice came clearly.

"That's all very well now," said Geoff, scornfully. But Roddy was n't going to tell Geoff anything. Not even when they had quite separated themselves from the procession and fallen far behind. was he going to tell Geoff anything.

Geoff glanced at Roddy's profile. He had never before noticed how much alike Roddy and Mary were.

"Still," said Geoff, "what 's a fellow to do about it?"

Roddy did look at him then gratefully and jeeringly.

"First aid to an idiot," said Roddy. "Thank you, Geoff."

Late that evening, as he wandered in the back way from having a solitary row on the creek, his father hailed him.

within Ivor's door. His hard look had been replaced by a patient one.

"I thought I told you to be in by twelve every night," said Ivor, glancing up at his old clock, always the best part of an hour fast, to put it without exaggeration. "Staying out all night seems to be getting a habit with you.'

If Roddy had been a girl his lips would have quivered at this shameless unfairness. There was a perceptible pause before he answered:

"Sorry, sir. It sha'n't happen again." He went on out, disdaining the slightest glance at the lying, leering clock-face.

At the head of the steps Bina rose up before him, and clasped his arm with both her eager hands.

"Roddy," said Bina, "I would n't blame you a bit for saying-it-to me now." Her voice quivered.

"I don't want to say it to you, dear," said Roddy. "You meant no harm, I know. For goodness' sake, go to bed!"

LITTLE Pen was lonesome that hot, windy August afternoon. His father, never a person to be depended on for companionship, pounded away on the type-writer in the office. Bina sat in the office door, and read her great-grandmother's love-letters, taking them one by one from an inexhaustible yellow bundle on her knees. Into her absorption Pen could pry no wedge of a plea to come and play. Uncle Rod was off somewhere. Aunt Kathy and Mary had driven to town that morning. Miss Lizzie had gone visiting.

But even as little Pen stood in the middle of the lawn and looked hopelessly about him he caught sight of the orange edges of Roddy's jersey under the willows.

"Take me in swimming, Roddy!" he shrieked. He tore at the buttons of his blue Dutch waist as he ran.

It was splendid sport to get on Roddy's back, and feel him forging strongly up the creek with you, thought Pen; all the better sport if you were really afraid a bit.

"Now you do exactly as I tell you," said Roddy, taking him on board. Little Pen promised faithfully that he would do exactly as Roddy told him.

In the long, quiet stretch of water between the house and the old disused watermill Pen had a good time. He pretended all the way that Roddy was a whale carrying him far out to sea, never to be seen again by the neglectful Bina.

"Here, you," said Roddy, turning about to go back, "don't squeeze me like that!"

Pen's arms relaxed. He pretended now that he had relented, and ordered the whale to take him home because Bina was crying.

Suddenly he slipped and grabbed tighter. "Don't hold me by the neck, Pen!" said Roddy, hurriedly and urgently. "Catch me under the arms-quick!"

Pen got rattled by Roddy's strange tone, and hugged the tighter.

Like all good swimmers, Roddy had imagined that he alone of all the world. was immune against drowning; but he changed his mind with horrible suddenness as he sank with little Pen's arms in a strangle-hold around his throat. When he rose he was making a frantic effort to free himself. All at once, at a shout from the bank, the child's arms loosed, and somewhere in the deep hole by the big rock Roddy lost the incubus which had dragged him down for the second time. But on again reaching surface he clawed ineffectively at air, and his breast and his brain were bursting. The third time Roddy came up a rope lay floating across his face; but though he would have been grateful for it earlier in this game of life and death, he felt quite comfortable and contented now, and he did n't want their silly old rope. As he sank peacefully for the last time he kept noticing the rope swaying in the water above his face.

After he got little Pen out, Hobson dived again after Roddy. Some one from the stables had come by then, and between them they carried Roddy to the office.

Half an hour later Hobson and the cousin doctor, whom Bina had been able to summon quickly, straightened up and stood looking at the inert figure prone on the floor over the old cushion off the lounge. The arms dangled. The bright head sank. It seemed asking piteously to be let alone. Their cessation of effort made an ominous hush in the room, which roused Bina from her still pose in the doorway.

"You are not going to give up yet?" she cried, turning on them. Her incredulous tone made them stoop instantly, and pretend that they had never thought of giving up.

She watched them now, suspicious of their every movement. Sometimes she looked from the door, hoping to see Ivor, whom a boy had gone to find; but mostly she fastened her intent gaze on that inert figure, so strangely Roddy. Only the dazzling dark head had any semblance of life. The eyelashes brushed marble. The lips breathed no more than the lips of a statue. The temples were faint hollows in pale

stone.

"Let me rub a while," said Bina to Hobson, noting his air of exhaustion. "I've strong wrists."

"Let her," nodded Wayne to Hobson.

Bina looked steadily from the window. in front of her as she strove, trying to draw back to Roddy one little breath of that life all about them, in the sunflooded air, in the carelessly onwardflowing water, in the wide, beloved landscape, wherein vivid memory images of Roddy and Bina moved as she looked. They rode through cool forests, walked quietly in flower-edged meadows, stood dumbly together on high mountain places, and grew toward heaven as they gazed, or played, like the children they were, on old stretches of shadowed lawn. Yet all the while she was intensely aware of that inertness with which her will strove blindly.

When next she glanced around, Ivor had taken Wayne's place over Roddy. He was asking Hobson about it, and Hobson was telling him in low tones, as if Roddy were dead.

Presently Hobson relieved Ivor. Now that he was inactive, Ivor had time to despair. He kept taking out his watch. After a while he went to the door to listen. It was growing late, and he expected momently to hear Mary's call at the ferry.

On turning back into the room he got the full effect of the tormented helplessness of the prone young body. The brilliant August afternoon sunlight poured over it. The wind lifted its shining hair. But it was a dead thing for the sunlight to pour along, for the wind to play with. It was a desecrated thing whereon blundering grief destroyed the dignity of Death's dreadful handiwork.

Ivor strode forward with an arresting gesture.

"I can't bear that any longer," he said

in a choked voice.

exacting love and pride- Where was the poor child taking him?

He glanced, bewildered, about the old school-room. school-room. Still mothering him with an arm, Bina was taking down a battered school-book. She opened it deftly with her free hand to a page picturing drowned manikins being restored to consciousness.

"Do not give up hope," read Bina, looking up in Ivor's face to see if he was listening. "Keep up artificial respiration for three hours, if necessary, for persons have been revived after showing no signs of life for that length of time."

Bina was saying this by heart, still looking anxiously up in Ivor's face.. Ivor made a shamed and fearful effort to get hold of himself. He could not help hoping again.

"I see," he said. "Let us go back. I won't make a fool of myself again. It was-just-watching them at him."

Bina understood that. Her arm around Ivor shook.

When they returned Hobson was standing, watch in hand. He put it in his

"Well, we 've been at it for an hour and a half now," said Wayne. He would speak in that hushed way, as if Roddy were dead.

Bina ran and caught Ivor's arm.

"Go on!" she ordered Wayne. She looked like a young Clotho daring Atropos to use her shears on Roddy's thread of life. Again Hobson and Wayne exchanged glances.

"Get Ivor out of here, then," muttered Wayne.

"You won't stop?" asked Bina. Wayne promised Bina that they would not stop.

Ivor went with Bina dazedly. He was mulling over the last week in his miserable mind. He had not given Roddy a decently kind word since the Hanging Rock episode. He felt that he might stand what was happening better if he had not been so unjust to Roddy, his one good boy. Yet he knew, and could not help feeling that Roddy, too, had known, the injustice to be only the expression of an

Wayne's place at the lifting, while Ivor again knelt and rubbed, always upward, to get the blood back to the heart. Ivor tried not to think. It was indeed easy not to think, with his heart bursting within him, as if he drowned and suffocated in

sorrow.

The sunlight turned pink, and slid with strange suddenness off Roddy and on to Hobson's manuscript, which the wind, now laid, had blown to the floor. In the thick, hot sunset silence they heard Mary's call at the ferry.

"Oh, my God!" said Ivor. His hands dropped with a gesture which yielded. He rose, and stood looking across the river. And Roddy had promised never to give Ivor and Kathy any more trouble.

With a stealthy glance at Bina, Wayne straightened on his knees, and shook his cramped wrists. Hobson stooped and picked up his manuscript, though he did not in the least know that he did this. Nor did he know that a subconscious devil in his brain was whispering, "d. Roderick