“I’m afraid you’ll find the cabin-door catch is broken,” said Madge Yarnell in an undertone, as she halted near Fessenden on her way to bed.

“If I hadn’t been sure you’d smashed through easily enough, I should have come back to the sloop and sailed away with you.”

“With me?”

“Certainly—made you captive like an old buccaneer. Willy-nilly, I should have clapped you under hatches, and sailed for the Spanish Main.”

Her brooding eyes dwelt long upon him. “That’s very interesting.” She struck her hands softly together. “It’s worth thinking about. Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Fessenden.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re only a man.”

In the morning, although he was not down for breakfast until nine o’clock, he was ahead of any of the others. One of the servants handed him a telegram. He read it with amusement over Betty’s cleverness.

Meet me Club one o’clock. Important personal matter. Want your advice. Don’t fail me.

He requested the butler to turn over the telegram to Mr. and Mrs. Cresap, and to explain to them that he would be back at Sandywood before dinner. On the plea that he vastly preferred a walk, he managed to evade the man’s suggestion that the car be brought round to take him to Sandywood Station.

Precisely at ten o’clock he was cooling his heels on the stone wall at the foot of the lane.

In that shaded hollow the sun had not yet pierced to dry the dew from the wild myrtle. Now and then the clambering creepers rustled where a field-mouse ran shyly through them. An oriole flashed from a sycamore, like an orange tossed deftly skyward. Spring was a living presence—Fessenden was stirred by its exuberance as he had not been these ten years.

By and by a rattle of wheels came to his ears. Presently a serene gray mare hove in sight, escorting, rather than pulling, a low-swung landau with an ancient calash-top. So capacious was the hood that at first he could descry no one in its depths. Then the mare came to a condescending halt, and a laughing face leaned into view.

“Good-morning, Patience-on-a-Monument.”

“Good-morning, Grief. Grief, that’s the fluffiest hat I ever saw.”

“Have you been waiting long?”

“Hours and hours.”

“Then, come, get in. We’re going driving ‘over the hills and far away.’”

She clucked to her steed, and the old mare, disdainfully obedient, conveyed them straight through the brook—the water rising to the hub—and up the windings of a wood-road beyond.

“The first thing a man wants to know on a picnic,” affirmed Betty sagely, “is whether or not there’s enough to eat. There isn’t, but there will be.”

“I rest content. Betty, who taught you to dress like that?”

“Do you like me—my clothes, I mean?”

“I like both, profoundly.”

She was all in white—fluffy hat, linen shirt-waist, duck skirt, and low shoes. Her hair was done into some sort of knot on her neck—Fessenden was rather weak at deciphering a girl’s coiffure. Her eyes shone wonderfully clear, and her smiles were frequent but uncertain, as if she bubbled with jokes too ethereal to share even with him.

“Betty,” he said, “do you mind my remarking that you look adorable to-day?”

“Only to-day?”

“Always, you witch! Betty, don’t tell me that any mere district school made half of you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it sounds a bit impertinent of me, but your voice—your talk—your dress! And, above all, you have the air—ah——”

“Of a lady, Mr. Critic?”

“Exactly. One doesn’t expect to find l’air distinguÉ in a farmer’s daughter.”

“A farmer’s niece.”

“Of course. Perhaps that makes all the difference. Do you mind my asking who your mother was, Betty?”

“My mother was related to the first families of Maryland.”

He could hardly forbear a smile at the pride manifest in her tone. “I see. She has a right to be proud of her daughter.”

“Really? Bob White, that’s the very nicest thing you could say to me if you’d tried a hundred years. Mother died when I was quite a little girl.”

Fessenden was silent. For a while, the girl guided the gray mare from wood-road to rambling lane, from lane to turnpike, and from turnpike back to lane. As they rounded a low hill, Fessenden felt the salt breath of the bay upon his face.

“Where are we bound?” he asked.

“To Jim George’s. It’s a sort of inn—a very rustic inn. He cooks delicious things. People come here for dinners from as far as Baltimore, but I think it’s too early in the season yet for anybody to be here but us.”

“I hope so with all my heart.”

They ascended a sandy track through a little forest of pine, and emerged upon an open space. At the foot of a bluff the bay stretched to the horizon. On the forest side stood a log-cabin, amplified on all sides by a veranda of unbarked pine.

From this structure promptly hobbled a white-haired darky.

“Mawnin’, lady. Mawnin’, gemman, sah. A day o’ glory fo’ the time o’ year. Yas, sah, yas, ma’am, a real day o’ glory. Won’t you ’light down, ma’am?”

“Of course we will, Jim George, and we want some of your best shad.”

“Ah d’clar to gracious! Is that yo’all, Miss Betty? Good Lan’! it’s been a coon’s age since I seen yo’ purty face round hyah. It does me proud to see a——”

“Shad and corn-pone, Jim George,” she interrupted. “I want you to show this gentleman we can still cook in the South.”

“Ah’ll show him. Ah’ll show him, Miss Betty. Rufe! Rufe! Come hyah and take Miss Betty’s hoss.”

A boy led the mare away, and Fessenden and the girl established themselves in a hammock under a solitary oak at the bluff’s edge.

He drew a long breath of the salt air and smiled at his companion. “This is Paradise, and not even a serpent to mar it.”

In an incredibly short time Jim George appeared, bearing a tray piled high with eatables, and proceeded to spread the cloth on a table under the oak.

“Miss Betty,” he said, “and, gemman, sah, there’s a shad-roe as is a shad-roe. Jes’ yo’ eat it with all the buttah yo’ kin spread on it. This hyah co’n-pone needs a spoon for it. Them baked ’taters growed theirselfs right hyah in the patch behint the house. They’s as sweet as honey. And hyah’s some milk. Yo’ ’member Jersey Molly, Miss Betty? Yas’m, this is her milk. None o’ yo’ pastorilized stuff neither—this is jes’ plain milk.”

“Betty,” said Fessenden, when Jim George had left them to themselves, “allow me to drink your health in Jersey Molly wine.”

She touched her tumbler laughingly to his. “Skoal! Bob White, do you know it was only the day before yesterday you picked me out of the brook?”

“I was just thinking of that. At any rate, we’re better acquainted than people ordinarily are in months.”

“In three days?”

“Certainly,” he maintained.

“You’re a very funny man.”

“I’m perfectly serious.”

“I was wondering why you should care to come on a picnic with me. I’m only a country girl, after all, and you—you’re different.”

“I care to come because you are you, and that’s plenty reason enough.”

“Hum-m.”

“Can you say as much?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Cruel child!”

“I didn’t say no—I only said I wasn’t sure.”

The afternoon slipped away, and at last they ordered their equipage for the homeward drive. Old Jim George bowed them off.

“Good-by, Miss Betty. Good-by, gemman, sah. Ah hope yo’ bofe come hyah agin right soon—yas, indeedy, and I hope yo’ come togedder, too. Yah ha!” He screened his mouth behind his hand and added in a stage whisper: “Miss Betty, that’s a mighty fine gemman yo’s got, he is so, mighty fine.”

They pursued the even tenor of their way homeward. The early butterflies flicked the gray mare’s nose. Blackbirds pilfered a meal from the plowed fields beside the road. Once a thrush—to Betty’s infinite delight—perched on the dashboard and sang a hasty trill.

“Spring is lovely,” declared Betty.

“Lovely,” agreed Fessenden with enthusiasm, and did not feel guilty of a commonplace.

Into the calm of their content came the clatter of distant hoofs.

“There’s some one riding down that crossroad there,” said Betty. “A woman. Is she waving at us, do you think?”

They peered out from the calash-top, and made out a horsewoman galloping down a side-path toward them. Her whip was going on her horse’s flank, and now and then she brandished it as if to signal the two in the landau.

Betty pulled up. “Let’s see what she wants.”

In another moment the horsewoman was near enough to bring an exclamation of recognition from Fessenden. “Hello! I believe it’s Miss Yarnell.”

“Miss Yarnell?”

“The girl who said she recognized the envelope you sent me the other day. Perhaps she wants to ask the way home.”

Miss Yarnell rode out of the crossroad full tilt, and only checked her sorrel when his nose was within a foot of the gray mare’s. Fessenden viewed this characteristic impetuosity with curiosity, which changed to amazement when his eyes fell upon her face. Her eyes were blazing, and her teeth were clenched.

She did not wait to be interrogated, but faced the calash-top.

“I’ve been looking for you!” she cried. “Come out here where we can talk.” Her tones were not loud, but her voice was choked with passion, and she lifted her riding-whip as she spoke. “Come out! I want to have a talk with you.”

The response was more prompt than she could have anticipated. Before she could carry out her evident purpose of forcing her uneasy horse to the very dashboard, Fessenden slipped from the landau, ducked under the mare’s head, and, seizing the sorrel by the bit, forced him back.

“What’s up, Miss Yarnell?” he said, with stern jocularity. “You mustn’t ride into people’s laps, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t want you,” she said. “I want her.” Again the silver-mounted whip was brandished toward the calash-top.

Betty’s piquant face emerged from its depths. “Are you looking for me?” she asked very sweetly.

Miss Yarnell’s arm fell. She stared at the childish face—at the wide-opened blue eyes and slender figure.

“O-oh!” Her voice was tremulous, all hint of violence gone from it. “You! I thought it was—I thought it was some one else.”

“At any rate, it isn’t proper to threaten one with a whip,” said Betty gravely.

“I—I know it. There!” Her arm swung up, and the whip spun a flashing arc through the air before falling into a field of ripening wheat. “The hateful thing!” She faced the girl again. “I’m sorry. I’ve been acting like a fool. I beg your pardon—and yours too, Mr. Fessenden.”

She checked the horse she had already started to wheel, and appealed to Betty. “I must ask you. I came after you because I thought you were—were some one else. I thought so because of that envelope Thursday.”

“A Baltimore friend of mine happens to have lent me a box of her notepaper.” There was impatience in Betty’s explanation.

“O-oh, I see! But—please!—that telegram from Charlie to him”—she indicated Fessenden. “I supposed—some one—had sent that—to put me off the track.”

“It wasn’t sent from White Cottage.”

“Then it was real?”

“I know nothing about it,” returned the girl icily.

Miss Yarnell wheeled her horse. “It was real! And I’ve been wasting time—wasting time!” Going helter-skelter, she was out of sight before Fessenden had time to resume his seat in the carriage.

“Whew!” he said, as they resumed their jog-trot pace. “She is a queer fish! But, Betty, why tell a tarradiddle, even to get rid of her?”

“I didn’t.”

“I mean about the telegram you sent me.”

“I didn’t send you one.”

“What! One came—signed by Charles Danton, too, just as we arranged last night.”

“I had nothing to do with it. After you went away, I remembered that I didn’t know your real name, and I was afraid a telegram for ‘Bob White, Esquire,’ left in the servants’ hands, would go wrong. So I didn’t send it. I wondered how you’d get away to meet me, but I knew you would contrive some excuse.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw the address of the telegram, “Thomas Fessenden,” yet it was true that his identity was unknown to his companion—through her own caprice, to be sure.

He gave a long whistle. “Then that wire really was from Danton. By Jove! if he wanted my advice about anything, he ought to have let me know in time. Confound him, it’s too late now! It serves him right.”

He turned to look for sympathy in Betty’s eyes, only to find there a light that baffled him.

“Are you angry with me about anything?”

“I’m not sure whether I am or not. Men are so—so bad, and so presumptuous.”

“Good heavens! Have I done anything?”

But in spite of all he could do to solve this new Betty, she set him down at the foot of the lane a very perplexed young man.