It was a sore and weary author who at length, having postponed the inevitable as long as possible, crept into the bunk where his host and the two sons slept audibly, with Benoix beside them. The latter stirred a little, and greeted the newcomer.

"That you, Channing? This is the real thing in democracy, at last!" he murmured drowsily, and slept again as soundly as the others.

But Channing, though every aching muscle cried aloud for oblivion, could not sleep. He tossed and turned, listened to the heavy breathing of the men beside him, listened to lighter sounds from the far end of the cabin where Jacqueline was also tasting true democracy in company with the two mountain women. He had lingered outside the door until the three women came in from the lean-to where they had prepared for the night, Jacqueline a tall sprite between her squat, thick-bodied companions, a heavy rope of bronze hair over each shoulder, small feet showing bare and white beneath the severe robe of gray flannel which was the nearest approach to a negligÉe known to Mrs. Kildare's daughters. The atmosphere of Storm did not lend itself to the art of the negligÉe.

Moonlight shone full upon her, and Channing, watching with quickened heart-beat, saw her lips move as she gave a quick, shy glance toward the bunk where he was supposed to be already sleeping.

"She's telling me good night, the darling!" he thought, quite correctly, and blew her an unseen kiss.

There were times of late when the author almost forgot to analyze his own sensations. The Overmind that observed and registered for future reference had grown a trifle careless. Occasionally Channing felt, and acted, quite like an ordinary young man in love.

Now he lay quite still, that he might hear that low breathing across the room, trying to distinguish Jacqueline's from the rest. He had taken the precaution to open both doors of the cabin wide, after his hosts were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy for a collector of impressions.

Beside him, Benoix and the other man slept with the abandon of tired animals, and the sound of their sleeping somewhat disturbed the poetry of the night. On the whole, however, he preferred them sleeping to waking. He sent his thoughts, on tiptoe, as it were, across the room. How exquisite she was, with her slim bare feet, and the hint of a chaste little ruffle showing at throat and wrist! Those drowsy, dewy eyes—the fluttering pulse in her soft throat—her clinging lips, which kissed as unconsciously as a child's until suddenly they were edged with fire....

Channing's thoughts became so insistent that perhaps they wakened her. There was a slight stirring in the bunk across the room, a slender gray shape appeared on the edge of it, feeling about on the floor for shoes. Still barefoot, with shoes in her hand, Jacqueline crept to the door.

Channing, all his fatigues forgotten, very carefully extricated himself from among the slumberers and followed. He congratulated himself upon the fact that his preparations for the night had been extremely sketchy, had in fact consisted merely in removing his coat and riding-boots. Once safe outside the cabin, he pulled on the boots, smoothed his hair with his fingers, knotted the handkerchief more becomingly about his throat, and went in pursuit of Jacqueline.

He had not far to go. She was sitting on the top rail of the nearest fence, her back toward him, framed in the center of the setting moon. She turned as he came upon her with a startled gasp:

"O-oh! You, Mr. Channing!"

One of the sweetest things about the girl to Channing was the queer little tender respect with which she always treated him. Even in their most intimate moments, he was still the great man, the superior order of being. She could not possibly have called him "Percival." Though he chided her for this attitude of respect, it did not displease him.

"I could not sleep in there," she explained, rather breathlessly, "so I came out to see the last of the moon. Of course I must go in again at once."

"Must you? Why, I wonder? I couldn't sleep either. Let's stay where we are!"

She asked, blushing: "But would that be quite proper?"

This first hint of conventionality in the girl surprised and rather touched him. He saw that she was quite painfully aware of the prim little wrapper, the unbound hair, the bare feet thrust into her shoes.

"Why, you little gray nun! Outdoors is quite as 'proper' as indoors—rather more so, in fact. It's the onlooker that makes things proper or improper, and here there are no onlookers.—This is all too wonderful to waste in sleeping!"

It was wonderful. The girl drew a breath of keen, cold ozone into her lungs.

"Isn't it queer," she said with a chuckle, "that mountains smell so sweet and mountaineers—don't? Ugh! fancy living in that stuffy cabin! All very well to sleep there once or twice for a lark, but to live there—!" She rubbed her bare ankles together unhappily. "Mr. Channing, do you suppose they were mosquitoes—?"

"Ssh!" he said. "I hold with the ancient belief that 'nothing exists until it is named.' There'll be several more nights of those bunks, you know.—If you find log-cabins open to suspicion, you ought to try the picturesque thatched-roof cots of Mother England! These mountaineers cling to the old traditions."

They laughed together, her slight barrier of shyness gone down in the intimacy of sharing a common peril.

"But were you ever so close to the moon, before?" she asked dreamily. "It is right face to face with us now. I believe we could step off into it."

"As if it were a great golden door, opening into—who knows where?—Suppose we try, Jacqueline? If we follow this ravine at our feet, it will lead us to the edge of the mountain, and so to the threshold of the moon, without a doubt. Only we must hurry if we are to get there before the door closes."

She shook her head. "Too late! Long before we reached the end of the ravine the moon would be gone, and then it would be dark as a pocket."

"Pooh! Who's afraid of the dark?" scoffed the city dweller in his ignorance.

"It wouldn't be safe," she said seriously. "We'd never be able to find our way back in the dark. Of course, if we had a lantern—" She dimpled up at him suddenly. "Do you know, there is a lantern hanging just inside the cabin door. I saw it."

Channing tiptoed back and secured the lantern, his heart thumping rather hard, not entirely for fear of discovery. They had come at last to the moment that had been in both their minds since the start of the journey, beneath all their gaiety and laughter—that final desired solitude of the heights.

They descended into the shallow ravine—a mere fissure it was in the surface of the mountain—crossing as they went an almost perpendicular cornfield of which Jacqueline made mental note as a landmark. They spoke in whispers, as if fearing to disturb the immemorial silence of the hills. Here and there a bird woke at their passing, and called a sleepy note of warning to its mate. Leaves rustled to the touch of the wind that is never still in high places. Near at hand sounded a sudden eerie cry, and Jacqueline drew close to Channing with a shudder.

"Suppose we meet a wildcat, or a bear, or something? What would we do?"

"Run," he said laconically; but he put a protective arm about her, which was perhaps what Jacqueline needed. It is usually in the presence of Man that Woman allows herself the luxury of timidity.

Soon they ceased to talk at all. He held her very close as they walked, and sometimes they stood for long moments without moving, embraced. No talk of Philip or other extraneous matters came between their kisses now. The young trees with which the ravine was filled hedged them in close and secret, a friendly guard; and Channing wished to abandon the expedition to the moon, being well content where he was. But Jacqueline, impelled by some blind instinct, urged him on toward the open, where a rim of gold, growing less and ever less, still showed between the interlacing branches.

Underbrush impeded them, tore at her skirts and her bare ankles, till Channing picked her up in his arms and carried her; not easily, for he was little taller than herself, but very willingly. So with his warm and fragrant burden, he emerged upon the edge of the mountain. At their feet was a sheer drop of many hundred feet into a caÑon, where a stream whispered, with the reflection of tumbled stars in its bosom. All about lay a wide prospect of lesser hills, covered with a mantle of soft and feathery verdure that stirred very lightly, as if the mountains were breathing in sleep. As they gazed, the rim of the moon sank slowly, slowly, till there was nothing left but starlight.

Jacqueline murmured, "Isn't it lucky we brought the lantern? Let's light it now." Her voice was rather tremulous.

"Why, sweetest?" He seated himself in the fragrant pine-needles, and drew her down beside him. "Look, little girl, how high we are above earth; out of men's knowledge, all the world asleep. We might be gods on high Olympus. 'You and I alone in Heaven dancing'"—he finished softly that most beautiful passage out of "Marpessa."

But the Overmind chose that moment to return to duty. It suggested to Channing that he sounded a trifle histrionic, a trifle as though low music were about to be played by the orchestra. He caught himself murmuring inwardly, "What a setting! What a perfect setting!"

"For what?" inquired the Overmind, not at all in disapproval but with a sort of impersonal interest.

Just then the gifted Mr. Channing would have traded temperaments with the dullest lout that ever lost his head over a woman.

His self-consciousness reacted upon Jacqueline. All her earlier shyness returned. She drew the prim little wrapper down over her ankles, and sat quite stiffly erect, submitting to his embrace, but no longer returning it.

"I think we'd better be going back now," she said. "Suppose Philip were to wake up and miss us?"

Channing had an odd and perfectly irrelevant thought of that bulge in the clergyman's hip-pocket.

"Bother Philip! You'd suppose the man was a sort of watch-dog. I believe you're afraid of me to-night," he teased, turning her face to his.

Her lips trembled as he kissed them. "It is so dark," she whispered.

"Little goose! Why should the darkness make a difference to you and me?"

"I don't know—but it does." Suddenly she pushed him away, and jumped to her feet. "Give me the matches, Mr. Channing. I want to light the lantern and go back."

He obeyed with a shrug, wondering just where and how he had blundered. A sense of artistic incompleteness mingled with a keen personal sense of chagrin. Did the girl care less for him than he had thought? Or was it merely the instinct of self-preservation that had warned her?

Now that the blood ran more coolly in his veins, he blushed to realize that the instinct had been right.

They went back into the ravine, which, as Jacqueline had prophesied, had become as dark as a pocket. Without the lantern they could not have seen a foot ahead of them, and even with the lantern their way was not easy. They stumbled along, still hand-in-hand and silent; but it was no longer the delicious, thrilling silence of the earlier adventure. The glamour of it seemed to have departed with the moon.

Jacqueline, stiff with an embarrassment she did not understand (she thought it the fault of the negligÉe and the stockingless feet) was eager to get back to the shelter of the crowded cabin. Channing was by this time as eager as herself, having discovered that riding-boots are not the most comfortable equipment for mountain tramping.

"There's our cornfield, at last!" said the girl, and both heaved sighs of relief.

They climbed laboriously toward the outline of corn stalks against the starlit sky, with a darker outline looming behind; but as they came into better sight of the cabin, she gave a cry of dismay.

"It's all lighted. Oh, Mr. Channing! They've missed us!"

"Damn!" said the author.

At that moment voices reached them: loud, drunken voices, mingled with laughter, and a snatch of song.

"Why—why!" muttered Channing, blankly. "That can't be our cabin!"

Nor was it. They had trusted to the wrong landmark.

They turned and hurried down into the ravine again. But Channing stumbled, and the sound reached the quick ears of the mountaineers above. There was a shout, in a voice suddenly sobered.

"Who's down thar?"

It was followed by the sharp ping of a bullet.

"Good gad, but they're shooting!" gasped Channing.

"They certainly are," said the girl, with a giggle. "It must be a still or something, and they think we're revenue officers!"

"Wh-what shall we do?"

"Run," she quoted him, laughing, and seizing his hand suited the action to the word. She seemed perfectly unafraid. "They won't get our range in the dark. Isn't this exciting?"

But the bullets followed them, too close for comfort.

"It's the lantern!" exclaimed Channing, and was about to drop it when the girl seized it out of his hand.

"Here—don't do that! We'd be wandering about in this ravine all night without it."

She looked at her companion in sheer surprise. It was her first experience of the type of man who loses his head in the presence of danger. Her voice became all at once quite motherly and kind.

"It's all right. You go ahead and I'll carry the lantern. They're probably too drunk to follow us," she reassured him.

Channing, to the after mortification of his entire life, obeyed without demur.

"It's all right," she repeated. "But go as fast as you can."

Shots were flying thick and fast about the lantern she held at arm's length. More than one grazed her closely.

"You great cowards up there!" she cried out in sudden anger. "Do you know you're shooting at a girl?"

There was a sudden silence. Then the shouts began again with a new note. "A gal, be ye? Boys, hit's a female down thar. Come on up, gal! Let's see what ye look like."

But the shots ceased, and the shouts came no nearer.

"Just as I thought—they 're too drunk to follow us," she said triumphantly. "Better get out of this neighborhood, though. Hurry on, Mr. Channing!"

"I'm afraid I can't," he said faintly. "You go without me."

She turned the light of the lantern full upon him, and saw that he was holding to a tree, swaying where he stood. There was a dark stain on his breeches, just above the knee, which spread even as she looked.

Without a word, she turned and began to run up the hillside again.

"Where are you going?" he cried.

"To get help. You are hurt."

"Those drunken brutes? Never!"

"They'll help us. I'm a woman."

"All the more reason—" he conquered his growing weakness, and put what force he could into his voice. "Jacqueline, I forbid you to go! Come here!"

She obeyed, wringing her hands. "But I don't know what to do for you!" she quavered.

"Listen! I must walk as far as I can, and when I'm done, you leave me, and run ahead for help. We can't be far from our own cabin now."

Channing had resumed his manhood, and it did not occur to the girl to argue with him. He was not a coward. He had merely been startled momentarily out of his self-control, unaccustomed as he was to physical danger. She realized this thankfully. The literary life does not prepare a man for the emergency of finding himself a target for bullets out of the dark.

Arm-in-arm they stumbled along the ravine. Soon he was obliged to lay an arm across her sturdy young shoulders, leaning upon her more heavily with each step. She felt the effort of his every motion, was aware of the labored breath with which he fought back his weakness. Still he struggled on. If she had loved him before, she adored him now.

"Oughtn't I to bandage it, or something?"

"No," he gasped. "It's not an artery, I think. Must get on. Almost done."

She was terrified. All the tenderness she had denied him that night rose in her, an overwhelming flood. As he faltered she urged him forward with crooning words, with caresses. "Just a little farther, that's my brave dear! We're almost there. It can't be far now, darling, beloved, my precious!"

He grew too faint to understand her words, but her will toward the last carried him on, step by step, she staring desperately at the skyline, looking for the cornfield that was to be her landmark.—Could they have passed it? Surely they had not come so long a way as this?

Suddenly the thought occurred to her that in starting back they might have entered the wrong ravine. There must be many such shallow fissures on the mountain-side. She heard near at hand the trickling of a spring, and stopped aghast. They had passed no spring on the way out. She was too thoroughly country-bred not to have taken note of running water instinctively, as animals do.

"Lost!" she whispered to herself; lost in wild country, between midnight and dawn, with a wounded man on her hands and—no stockings on! The choking giggle she gave was more than half hysteria.

Then, without a word, Channing pitched forward on his face.

That steadied her. In a moment she had brought water in her cupped hands from that providential spring, had found his pocket-knife, ripped up his trousers-leg, and bandaged the wound as coolly as Jemima herself might have done it, though the sight of the blood nauseated her. She bathed his face with a wet handkerchief, but his eyelids merely fluttered once and were still again. In a panic she lifted his head to her bosom, trying to warm his cheeks; kissed him on the lips again and again, violently, begging him to wake and speak to her. It is a pity that the collector of impressions was unable to appreciate these man[oe]uvers.

"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she moaned.

He had bade her leave him and run for help—but did she dare? Even as she considered it, there was a rustling in the underbrush, and startlingly near at hand sounded the eerie cry that had frightened her earlier in the night. It did not frighten her now, oddly enough. She regretted the pistol she had left in the cabin. Her hand tightened on the pocket-knife, however, and she placed herself between Channing and the direction of the sound.

"Go away! Get out of this! Scat!" she said firmly, flourishing her lantern.

For a tense moment she waited; but the cry was not repeated. It had put out of the question, however, any thought of leaving Channing there defenseless. There were wild-cats in these mountains, she knew, rattlesnakes, too, possibly bears; and even the foxes that barked far away at intervals were not to be trusted with an unconscious human smelling of fresh blood.

There seemed nothing better to do than shout for help, on the chance of somebody hearing her in this wild and desolate place. Through the ravine rang the golden voice that might one day enthrall the world, pitched to fill a wider auditorium than it had ever filled before. From side to side it rolled and echoed in musical cadences: "Help! Come! Somebody please hear me! Help!"

Birds awoke with startled twittering, and various creatures of the underbrush, which had been attracted to the light of the lantern, fled away in terror. She sent her voice in the direction of the cabin they had mistaken for their own. Drunk or not, there were men there, and she needed them.

But after some time, an answer came from the other side of the ravine, a little way beyond. A bobbing light appeared on the edge, and a faint halloa reached her.

"What's wrong down there?"

Jacqueline shouted: "Man hurt! Bleeding! Awfully!"

The lantern bobbed rapidly downward. Presently a man came into sight, stoop-shouldered and spectacled, and roughly dressed. He knelt beside Channing and examined him.

"Nothing broken. Just loss of blood. That's not a bad bandage. It will last till we get him up the hill. No need to cry, young lady," he added; for at the first sound of that pleasant, crisp, gentleman's voice, Jacqueline had broken into sobs. She knew that her immediate troubles were over.