"Donahue," said Jimmie earnestly, "you may be frank. We do not invite criticism, but we can stand observation. What, then, after two thoughtful days, is your fairly honest opinion of this—ah—institution, of which you are an ornament?"

"Jimmie, you shall not make fun of Donahue. I know he's not pretty. But his eyes are kind, and he is good. He is not for ornament," Augusta defended.

Jimmie laughed wickedly. "All the homely people I ever knew have had that said about them. They are not pretty, but their eyes are good, and they are useful. And they do love to hear it! Yes! The men swear great deep oaths under their breath. And what the women do I was never able even to guess." And he shook his head in utter inability to deal with the matter.

"But, pardon me, you are divinely right—as always—about Donahue. Not only is he useful and good; he is more. He is essential, and virtuous. I would defend his morals in open court. And when I think of his temptations, of the wild free and frisky gypsy life that he has led, and then contemplate the shining nobility of his stern virtues, I am positively ashamed of myself. At such times I even resolve to lead a better life.

"He is a thief, of course," he continued reflectively, "but then, stealing is a gypsy virtue, so—"

"He isn't any such thing," Augusta said, again drawn out to the defense. "I know he ate the bag of apples, bag and all. But he thought they were—"

"Woman, you interrupt. You digress. You trifle. You dissipate and confuse the issue. Let us get on. We are not discussing Donahue. He is considering us. Does he approve, or does he merely tolerate? That is the point."

Augusta was at the instant fearfully engaged in the perilous strategy of turning a good sized steak on a very small pan, and was not paying the slightest attention to what he said.

"Again I say, Donahue, let us have your decently reserved opinion. I do not ask for brutal frankness. No rough work, you understand. You have now, for the afore-mentioned two thoughtful days, listened to my uplifting conversation. You have been blessed with the vision of Augusta's beauty. You have eaten her apples. What then? It is time for you to speak."

Thus adjured, Donahue turned his head slightly and sniffed delicately of the mingled tang of Augusta's wood fire and the savor of the cooking steak. His head was close to the ground. He wriggled one ear in a deliberate and patent pretense that a fly was bothering him. Then, as though realizing that that subterfuge would not serve, he calmly and meditatively lifted his off fore leg and deliberatively scratched the prominence back of his ear, with the soft side of his hock.

"Aha! A diplomat! Did you see that, Augusta? He has that rarest combination of all—outstanding virtue coupled with tact and good manners. How many very good people are there who could have refrained from giving us their honest opinion? Their duty would have forced them to it. But Donahue, no. He scratches his ear, and refrains. How beautiful it is to be able to refrain!

"All right, Donahue. All in your own good time. Either you do not care to hurt our feelings, or you are not yet sure that you have made us out. Scratch on, oh gentle minded philosopher, and—"

"Jimmie, get the big plate. You might as well help as sit on that rock and talk. He isn't listening anyway." Leaving Donahue to his own thoughts, Jimmie went obediently over to the wagon and stepping up on the cross-bar reached a long arm in back of the seat to a swinging rack and deftly brought forth a heavy platter.

"We'll dine out to-night," said Augusta, nodding at the little folding table that she had set out on the grass.

"Oh hear ye, Donahue, our beloved Lady cracketh a pun!"

"Don't jiggle the plate. And don't drop it!"

Craftily, his eye on the shifting level of the gravy, his feet feeling for the uneven places of the ground, Jimmie made his perilous journey, with the combined manner of a sleep walker and of a priest of some terrible temple of sacrifice, from the stove to the table.

Then, when Augusta had followed with other things, they sat down on little camp stools close together. A sudden timid, half-fearful reverence and diffidence came over them, as of a perfect moment that could not be held nor ever fully repeated. A fleeting, intangible joy in each other caught them, joy in their very aloneness, in their oneness of thought and heart and soul. And they knew, almost fearfully, that such moments are rare in even the very happiest of all lives. A little tear glistened in the sunlight on Augusta's lashes.

But Jimmie knew better than to let the moment fade out trying to prolong it. Better break it while the beauty of it was yet in the glow.

"I am dying, Egypt, dying, for the half of that steak! Is it any concern of yours, Madam, that your husband has had no food for the last four and twenty hours?"

"You've had six egg's and three quarts of milk, and you fought—"

"Food! I said. Didn't I, Donahue? I repeat, I've had nothing to eat since this time last night. And I am ravening. If you don't cut, I shall tear!" "Hold the table steady, then."

They ate with happy hunger, laughing at the untried makeshifts with which they tried to bridge over the distance between sacred table manners and the bird-in-hand necessities of the rickety little board, spatting a little now and then as each insisted on giving the other the choicest bits of the food.

Once Jimmie spilled over the salt in a moment of forgetfulness, and he watched curiously as he saw Augusta furtively pick up a tiny pinch of it and pretend to look at it and then, just naturally, throw it over her shoulder. Strangely enough, he had nothing to say on the matter. This little girl woman of his made him think a great deal.

Augusta had brought him home that other morning, out of the park, and sent him to bed. Then she had gone rapidly and ruthlessly to work as though she had been planning just what she was to do.

She saw the boarders of the house at breakfast and told them that she must close the house at once. Some of them had been friends and it pained her to give them any inconvenience. But she told them just why she was forced to do what she was doing. And, before she had finished, there was not one of them who would not have agreed to move his or her trunk out to the sidewalk on the instant, if it would help her.

Then she went to renting agents. And before another day she had sublet the house for the remainder of the term of her mother's lease.

The next part of her work was the worst. She had to bring into the house dirty, pock-marked men whose business it was to paw around with grimy hands and shake the furniture and try to bluff her into discouragement. But she had fixed upon a certain sum of cash money that she must have from the sale of the furniture. And from that determination she was not to be moved. One after another, Ann joyfully drove these men from the house, and Augusta waited.

The dealers had, of course, run around and seen each other and had agreed among themselves to force her to sell for very little cash. Her husband was sick. She had to go away with him. What could she do? It did not so much matter, they told each other, which of them got the furniture. That could be all fixed up. The thing was to protect the business, so that people shouldn't think that they ought to get new prices in cash for old stuff.

But finally Augusta's steady insistence on one price convinced one dealer that she would never sell for less. He talked with her over the phone. Then he came hurrying to the house, not because he wished to beat his brothers with whom he had agreed, but because he was afraid some one of them would beat him.

He offered Augusta half what she had demanded. Augusta did not argue. She called Ann to do her duty. The wordy battle raged down the stairs and out through the front hall to the door. On the doorstep, with Ann jamming the door on his foot where he had stuck it to prevent her shutting the door, he came to within ten dollars of the sum which Augusta had fixed. With another bang at his foot, Ann relented and let him come back to the foot of the stairs.

Augusta was standing at the head of the stairs. She did not feel any of the zest of battle which inspired Ann. Jimmie was worse that day than she had dreamed of his being. She was keeping him to his room and, as far as possible, hiding from him the things that were taking place in the house. She dreaded now to have him hear any of this argument, and she was sickened with the thought that the ten dollars over which they were haggling might some day be just the price of the difference between life and death for her Jimmie. Who could tell? The day might come when just for that ten dollars he might be denied the some one thing that would mean life for him. A wild, unknown anger flamed up in her and she took a step down the stairs, threatening in a tense, bitter voice:

"If you do not give me all, I will take everything out into the street and burn it."

The man took one look up into her flaming eyes, and—his hands dropped from the argument which they had been preparing. He turned quickly, grabbed a bill from his pocket and handed it over to Ann, to bind the contract.

Augusta left the two of them to quarrel out the details, for there were some things which she had stipulated that Ann must have. For herself she had reserved only some cooking things and plenty of blankets.

In the meantime she had accomplished the most ambitious part of the whole enterprise. She had bought a horse. She owned Donahue.

Back in her not distant school days Augusta had known Mary Donahue. Old Greenwich village, which nowadays harbors its thousands of intellectual gypsies and free riders of every shade and hobby, used to, and does still, furnish a winter home for a circle—they were not a tribe—of Irish gypsies. They did not form a community, nor did they travel the country in caravans. Each family went out by itself in the spring, through the northern part of the state, sold its own laces, told its own fortunes, swapped its own horses. But by what seemed an unspoken agreement they all returned late in the fall to the same neighborhood. With the instinct for places, which is strong in even the most unreliable of migratory birds, they came to refuge in the rickety jumbles of houses between Washington Square and West Fourteenth street, where one street blunders into another, and gets nowhere, and turns back, until, in desperation, West Fourth street crosses West Twelfth street and ties the whole business up in a knot.

Patrick Sarsfield Donahue was one of these gypsies, coming honestly and anciently into his way of living and having no intention of leaving it for any other. But Mary Donahue, his daughter, was untrue to the traditions of her kind in that she had insisted on going to school every day of the time they were in New York. Augusta had been interested in her. Augusta would be.

Now Augusta went down across Fourteenth street to find Mary Donahue. If Mary Donahue could, and she did, manage, cook for, boss and generally hold together on the road, an enterprise that consisted of a father, six horses—more or less according to the balance of trade, four growing sisters, two wagons, two small healthy brothers, and uncounted, and wholly unaccountable, dogs; if Mary Donahue could manage this, and drive a team of horses, then Augusta could drive one horse and keep Jimmie out in the air and free from worry until he should be cured.

The idea was so simple and so much to her own liking that Augusta was almost ashamed to think of the fun she was going to have with it. And she hugged it jealously to herself so that Jimmie should not know until the wagon was at the door for him.

She knew how he would loathe and fret at the thought of going to any sort of a sanitarium or a resort. And she had a terrible dread that her money would not be enough for that. Now this way, once the horse and wagon were paid for, they would not need any money except for the things they actually ate, they and the horse. She was necessarily a little vague about the latter item. But Mary Donahue could give her the facts as an expert.

Mary Donahue, red haired, quick, a woman where Augusta was a child, understood and glowed with sympathy. But she could not entirely suppress the little smile of the professional at the ardent amateur. Mentally she gave them about three days to stay out on the road.

But then Augusta talked to her. And Mary Donahue came and saw the business-like way in which Augusta had dismantled the house. And she saw Jimmie. And Augusta talked to her more.

The result was that Patrick Donahue sold Augusta a gypsy horse and a gypsy wagon. And Mary Donahue drove the spectacle to Augusta's door one morning early and announced that she herself would pilot the expedition out of the perils of New York.

She drove the length of Broadway, until that thoroughfare became a country road well beyond the sacred, constable haunted terraces of Yonkers. All the while she discoursed valuable information and wise counsel. Augusta listened greedily, cramming mental notes until her head swam. Wardwell listened too, half asleep, lying most of the day in a bunk that stretched along the side of the wagon, not really believing that this thing was going on as it seemed to be, but not interested enough, and really too sick, to bother about a protest.

Before sun-down Mary Donahue helped them with their first camping and cooking. And Augusta, meekly submitting to the rulings of her mentor, was filled with the secret inner triumph of the dreamer who sees his dream come true under the last commonplace test of practicability. She could do it! Her plan would work!

Wardwell, standing around, easing the soreness out of his joints, and sniffing with water in his mouth at the cooking meat—. He had at this time an almost animal craving for red meat, and Augusta's diet would not allow it until night—Wardwell, too, knew with a sudden conviction that Augusta's plan was going to work.

By the time the busy gypsy girl had shown how to stow the things away for the night she had become so interested in the project that she began to feel a certain responsibility for it.

"What would you do," she asked, eyeing Augusta speculatively as the latter sat on a low stump with a red framing of low sumach bushes hanging about her shoulders, "what could you do if you lost your money on the road, or went broke, or—?"

"Oh, but," Augusta broke in quickly, "Jimmie's going to be all right in no time. And he'll be writing lots and lots. And since it won't cost us hardly anything to live, why we'll be getting rich—rich!"

She did not want the financial outcome of their venture discussed in Jimmie's hearing. She herself had no more thought or fear of the future than have the birds when they start to follow the spring into the north. But she knew that Jimmie's mind was raw on just this, and she wanted it plain that he was the man and the provider.

"Of course," said Mary Donahue, not listening. "But—with eyes like yours"—she was studying Augusta out loud—"and with the look that comes in them at times—why, it'd be a shame not to—" She wheeled quickly and jumped up into the wagon.

She came back with a bundle which she dropped on Augusta's lap. Out of it she shook a long flaming red veil which she wound quickly and bewilderingly around Augusta's head and shoulders.

Wardwell looked on, a benign and philosophical spectator. It seemed that the gypsy girl had packed the wagon. Jimmie was wondering mildly if she had, perhaps, packed in a witch's cauldron, and a package or two of forked lightning, and a few snail's teeth. If so, he would look forward to an interesting summer.

"Your hair's all wrong for a fortune teller, of course," Mary Donahue admitted. "But that don't make any difference—mine's worse, and I can make as much as the best of them. If it does you no good, it'll do you no harm," she grumbled as she felt Augusta's rising resistance.

"You don't have to keep the money, you know. But always make them pay some money, anyway. Do you hear? Never tell a fortune without money to pay."

She gave Augusta no time to answer but dove at the bundle again, unfolding a red board and breaking out on it a pack of cards.

"You are a 'heart' woman," she said, continuing aloud her study of Augusta. "You are almost too light now, but you'll get darker, and you're married; that makes a difference."

She laid the cards at Augusta's hand, commanding:

"With your left hand, cut three piles towards your heart."

Augusta gingerly lifted the cards as she was told. She was just a little frightened, but she would not protest or let Jimmie see that she felt it to be anything more than a joke.

The gypsy gravely inspected the cards, top and bottom, of the three piles, and said nothing. Then she put them together and began dealing out from top and bottom into eight piles, a single card to each pile as she went.

"To your house"—she named the piles as she laid down each card—"to yourself—to the one you love best—what you do expect—what you do not expect—sure to come true—this night—your wish."

When she had dealt out all the cards in this way, she turned up the first pile and began to read: "To your house: there is love and good times, lots of fun making. You'll both still be laughing and taking fun out of it no matter what comes. It is all good, good!" She was kneeling at Augusta's side now. There was none of the air of mystery of the professional card reader. She had forgotten that she was giving Augusta a lesson. She was poring eagerly over the cards reading them swiftly as they came up to her, with all of a child's abandon in a game.

"To yourself: there is shortness of money. You will be worried about money, not right away, maybe, but some time before very long. And a horse, a horse will be in a part of the worry.

"To the one you love best: a dark—!" She stopped and turned about with a swift, tigerish twist of her lithe body. Wardwell, who had been gangling about, amused, and yet feeling somewhat left out of the picture, suddenly found himself pierced by the angriest pair of blue eyes he had ever seen. He did not know what it was about. But from the look the girl gave him he would not have been surprised if she had leapt upon him and buried claws in him.

"What—what is it?" Augusta asked wonderingly.

"Nothing," said the gypsy girl shortly. And she turned back to the cards.

"What you do expect: there is sickness and long journeying, and black and white all mixed together.

"What you do not expect: deceit. Deceit will break your life." Again the girl turned sharply to eye Wardwell. Evidently he stood the scrutiny well, for she turned back and said quite gently:

"I mustn't do this. You didn't ask me. And you didn't pay me. And I'm only giving you a lesson, anyway. Now just watch and listen." She mixed the cards all up together and began pulling out combinations at random, reading them in hasty rhymes as she showed them to Augusta.

"Back to back says speedy meeting—Three eights, change of states—Two jacks and a king, a constable bring—Two kings and a jack, an old friend back—" And so on through twenty flying combinations, while Augusta watched the quick brown fingers and listened to the broken rhyming, fascinated, yet feeling that she would very much rather not touch the cards at all. She knew, of course, that she would never think of using them in the way the gypsy girl had suggested. Nevertheless, she was afraid of them. She was sharply conscious that the girl had stopped telling what she saw in the reading because she had thought that she saw something unpleasant, and something connected with Jimmie.

Augusta knew that she could never believe in any of this. It was just the patter of a trade. The combinations suggested the rhymes that went with them. That was all. But, just the same, and although she was very grateful for the help that the girl had given her, Augusta was wishing that Mary Donahue would take her cards and go home.

"Now shuffle the cards and see it for yourself," Mary Donahue wheedled. "You've got it in you—I can see it in your eyes. And when you have that, you can see things even if you don't know the names of the cards. And if you haven't got it, you could study them all your life—I've known people that did—and never know boo."

Augusta took the cards with evident reluctance, but began to shuffle them with an ease and sureness that caught Wardwell's attention instantly. He remembered that Rose Wilding had had an unexplained horror of cards. She had never permitted even the most innocent game of cards in her house. It had been a difficult and, at times, an irksome restriction. He knew that more than once she had lost good boarders on account of it. But Rose Wilding had persisted in her strong way, with few words, giving neither excuse nor explanation. So he was fairly certain that Augusta had never before held in her hands a pack of cards.

Now he watched with sharp interest Augusta's deft, natural handling of the cards, and, somehow, he did not like it.

With a feeling of growing excitement Augusta laid out the piles as she had seen the other girl do, and without wishing to do so found herself naming over the piles as she went around. She had not thought that she would remember how they ran. But she found that she could not forget if she tried. And it seemed that she did not want to try.

Augusta turned up the first of the piles and looked blankly at them. Her hands were cool and firm, but she felt herself trembling inwardly with a queer, creeping surge of blood. And she drew a quick breath of relief when she saw that the cards meant nothing to her. They were just a jumble of red and black and white, just pictures and spots. She wondered at herself for being excited about it.

"Don't try to read anything from them," the gypsy voice at her ear commanded. "Just don't think of anything, and just keep staring steady and steady until your eyes cross."

Wardwell, watching, felt an irritated impulse to interfere. He hated to see Augusta's delicately sensitized mind submitted to these gypsy tricks. But, man-like, he was afraid of appearing ridiculous if he made any kind of a fuss. For, after all, it was only a little bit of fooling.

Augusta sat limp and stared indifferently down at the cards as she had been told to do. Her eyes fell out of focus and she continued to stare while the spots and pictures moved about in a soothing, restful sort of blur that lured her mind farther and farther away from the grip of conscious thought.

Without any wish to do so, and without any thought, she began to speak.

"To my house: there is laughter and fear, coming together and in pairs. I must never, never share my house with any third one. There is water laughing by it all the day long in the sunshine, and a bleak wind whistling past in the night.

"To myself: I am starting upon a long, long journey. I shall not rest and my feet will be hurrying always, always. For the end of my journey is hidden in the heart of The Hills of Desire.

"To the one I love best: there is a dark woman, tall and straight, and—"

A quick, visible tremor ran over her, and as though it had touched a spring in her body she sprang into the air like a wounded animal. As she came to her feet, groping and tottering, her head cleared and she saw Wardwell and ran to him.

"What was it, dear?" he said soothingly, petting her head as she hid her face against his breast. "Don't think of it, darling. We both know that it's nothing but nonsense. We won't tell our fortunes, sweetheart. We'll just live them."

Augusta did not say anything. But after a little, feeling the security of Jimmie's arms about her, she turned and looked defiantly, resentfully at Mary Donahue who was unconcernedly picking up the cards and the board from the ground where Augusta's sudden move had scattered them. Then Augusta was aware of the gypsy veil about her head. She tore it off and threw it at the stooping girl.

She was instantly sorry and apologetic. She ran over and picking it up she handed it to Mary Donahue, who had pretended, very plausibly, not to notice.

Mary Donahue took it and wrapped up the bundle as she had brought it from the wagon. Then she went to put the bundle back where it belonged, at the same time announcing that she must be getting home.

With a final admonition to them not to poke holes in the roof of the wagon, she shook hands with Wardwell, kissed Augusta, and stepped away across the fields toward a trolley line that would take her to New York.

They never saw her again.

In the morning Jimmie saw Augusta struggling with the harness which Mary Donahue had so easily slung under the wagon. He was minded to let her wrestle with it for a while. For, with a sick man's querulousness he was sometimes irritated by the ease and capability with which Augusta got things done. It was a constant challenge to his own frequent periods of helplessness. But he could not be unkind. He came dutifully over to help her.

"We'll have to do this thing in the orthodox way, Augusta, or that horse will laugh himself to death at us."

"I know what goes on first," Augusta defended herself against his implications. "But I don't know the name of it."

"Never mind," said Jimmie. "Go over and get the horse by the mane. Talk to him. Divert his attention. I'm nervous while he watches me fooling about with his necktie and suspenders. What the deuce is his name, anyhow? In another minute I'll be calling him 'it,' like a baby."

"Why, Jimmie, I forgot to ask!" Augusta confessed blankly, feeling herself convicted of a serious neglect. "Whatever shall we do?" "Christen him."

"But what good will that do? He won't know that it's his name."

"Tell him."

"But, how?"

"How did he find out his name in the first place?"

"I don't know—Oh yes," Augusta brightened, "You just shake the oats at him, or whatever it is for little horses, and you say Dan, Dan, or whatever it is. And that's his name!"

"But suppose it was Alice? Nonsense!" Jimmie argued contrarily. "He'd think it was the name of the oats. Just as if you said Bran, Bran! or Force, Force! or Shredded—"

"Now Jimmie, please stop. And be serious and think. You know we've got to call him something. Why just think! If anyone should stop us and ask us what was our horse's name. And we'd have to say that we didn't know. And then they'd tell somebody else. And somebody else would stop us and ask us. And then we'd be stopped and suspected and arrested and maybe put in a jail somewhere."

"I wouldn't," said Jimmie basely. "I didn't steal the horse."

He stooped quickly as though he expected something to be thrown at his head. But as his eye caught something on the collar he straightened up exultantly.

"It's all right!" he exclaimed eagerly. "We're safe! Here's his name on the collar."

"Oh, on his collar! I didn't know they did that for horses. Let me see."

"There it is, plain as his nose."

"Donahue," Augusta read. "But that isn't his name. That's his father's name—I mean, Mary's father's name—I mean, his owner's name."

"No," said Jimmie gravely. "I'm afraid you don't understand at all. You see, gypsies are that way. The oldest horse—You will admit that this is the oldest horse—the oldest horse is always called by the family name. You understand, it's just like in England. You know they never think of calling the son and heir by any boy's name. He is not Billie or Teddy or anything like that. He's simply called by the name of the house. He's Kingsmead, or Duncastle, or Ravenwood—So strong, you know, and effective."

"So," he waved his hand by way of introduction, "we have with us, 'Donahue.'"

Augusta crinkled up her little nose. She knew that Jimmie was quite capable of cooking up the whole explanation on the instant. But, as she had no way of convicting him just now, she accepted the introduction and called out sweetly to the horse who was grazing unconcernedly at the end of his tie-rope:

"Donahue!"

He lifted his head. So it was settled. His name was Donahue.

Jimmie glowed with virtuous triumph as he led "Donahue" over to the wagon, slung on the harness and backed him between the shafts.

But as Augusta finally climbed into the wagon she noticed a name painted on the front boxing under their seat. While Jimmie went through the wholly superlative business of guiding Donahue out to the open road—the horse would have done much better if let have his own head—Augusta wriggled skilfully back into the body of the wagon, to search for further proofs of Jimmie's duplicity. Evidently she found plenty of them, for when she got back into her place her face was red with exertion and suppressed anger. Jimmie gave his entire attention to the road ahead, driving ostentatiously with both hands as though he were in the finish of a crowded race—Donahue would not have left his sober, middle-of-the-road walk for anything less than a roaring motor truck.

Augusta broke out laughing hysterically. Jimmie preserved a dignified, inquiring silence, while Donahue almost broke into a trot.

"The wagon's name is Donahue!" Augusta wailed shrilly between peals of laughter. "Just like the first son in England! And the cook stove is named Donahue. And they call the skillet Donahue. And the name of your bunk is Donahue!"

"'Bunk?'" Jimmie queried dejectedly. "Was it all bunk? It sounded all right while I—"

"I don't mean slang. I mean the thing you slept on."

"I didn't sleep," said Jimmie, springing nimbly to a diversion of the attack. "I only touched the thing in three spots. And I've got corns in all three places."

"Well, you snored," said Augusta cruelly.

"Never!" Jimmie averred with solemn unction. "I never snore."

"Very good," Augusta agreed pleasantly. "I suppose you'll say it was Donahue."

"This comes of being married," Jimmie remarked warningly to the Hudson river. "Never before did any lady tell me to my blushing face that I snored like a horse."

So they bickered happily through the June morning, careless of where the end of the road might be, the feeling of dependence upon each other and of utter independence of all other things wrapping them together in a nearness that was so sweet and so friendly tender that it almost hurt.

And here at the end of their beautiful first day alone Wardwell sat watching his little lady furtively toss a pinch of the spilled salt over her shoulder. He knew the superstition about spilled salt. Augusta was taking no chances. But he was wondering—as he probably would continue to wonder during the length of his life—at how little he knew of the real thoughts that went on back of the beautiful blue eyes that looked out so open and unafraid at him and at all the world.

Was she a child that had not learned to know fear? Or was she a woman full grown, so wise in love and strength that she could look down all fear? He guessed that she was both of these things. For she threw salt over her shoulder. And she looked out of those deep blue eyes into the blood-red sunset on the opposite hills across the wide river, and he saw that there was in those eyes a light as brave and unafraid as fire itself. The light is never afraid of the darkness, for while the light lives there is no dark.

The day had been quite unseasonably hot and there were storm clouds piling up like boulders on the tops of the lower Catskills, away to the northwest. The river lay below them, dry-eyed, still, mistless, with a great, terrifying gash of red shot across its bosom where lay the path to the dying sun.

A breathless, heavy hush lay over the valley. Shutting their eyes to the motion of the distant boats, they could have believed that the world had suddenly died around them, leaving them alone and forgotten. There was not a sound, not a ripple of air, not even the whirring of a bat or the cheep of a bird. Wardwell, over sensitive and craving for the homely cheery noises of things moving, stirred uneasily.

But Augusta, child though she was of shut in city walls, had in her enough of the primitive to know that there was a physical cause for the hush that had fallen upon nature. She could feel a storm coming.

How would Jimmie stand it? She had thought of this when she was planning—if indeed she had really done any planning—to make this adventure. But it was a fact that she had thought only vaguely of warm rain beating harmlessly against the tight roof of the wagon, of falling dreamily off to sleep in the dark listening to the soft patter and drip of rain among the trees.

Now she looked fearfully at Jimmie, and at the frail walls of their home. And she trembled as she thought of the security and comfort from which she had brought him to this, where she had but a bit of dripping canvas to put between him and exposure. Already in the process of mothering him she had come to think of him as a helpless child. And vague, terrifying memories played upon her, of things heard and imagined, of great trees crashing down in forests, of roaring winds and furious, driving rain beating down to death the little wild things of the woods. Now she realized, for the first time it seemed, that Jimmie's life hung perilously on the care that she could give him, that even a wetting, such as, for herself, she could laugh at, would perhaps cost him more than he could gain by days and days in the open.

With a determined shrug she threw off the impression and rising began to rattle the dishes.

"Jimmie," she said lightly "take the pail from under the wagon and go out to the spring for water. I've let the fire die down and now I'll have to build it up again, for nothing but boiling water will take the fat off these dishes."

"You should have camped near a hot water spring."

"There isn't any such thing."

"Sure there is; there's Arkansas Hot Springs—Why didn't you camp there?—And Virginia Hot Spring, and San Antone, and—"

"Take Donahue with you, if you must talk. He'll listen, if you give him a drink."

"Donahue," he said sadly as he unhooked the pail from under the wagon, "we be brothers in calumny. She blackens your character. She belittles my powers of charming converse. Let us retire to the unfrequented spring and there we shall mingle our bitter tears with the sweet waters."

Donahue saw the pail being taken from its place, knew that the pail was going where there was water, and followed without comment.

Mary Donahue had indicated for Augusta the spring and the camping place. A high wall of hill stood up above the road on the right and out of the hill came the spring. On the river side of the road a fringe of trees screened the little flat promontory in the centre of which the wagon stood. Occasionally the purring of a swiftly driven automobile on the hard road within a few yards of them told them that the world still ran its hustling way, but they were as effectually hidden and private as if they had been securely housed in the middle of some vast estate of their own. And when the dishes were washed and everything put in shape for the night, Augusta brought blankets and they sat perched out on the very edge of the cliff looking down to where the "Central" trains thundered along some two hundred feet directly below them, and out across the broad, dark expanse of the river.

The Albany boat came gliding up the silent path of the river, her tiered, warmly lighted decks looking like a series of summer porches, the steady, even motion of the boat giving to the watchers on the hill the pleasant feeling that she was standing and that they were being gently carried past her.

The searchlight from the boat playing along the hill bank caught the figures of the boy and girl struck out in enormous silhouettes above the rim of the cliff and a merry cheer came up from the boat.

"Go on and mind your own business," scolded Jimmie. "We are no mooning young couple. And we are no subject for flash-light pictures. We are sober married folks, with our home in the background and a respectable horse in the middle distance."

The flashlight held them for a moment and then swung off overhead and went to peer into the windows of a moving train on the "West Shore." The band on the now receding boat broke into an old fashioned waltz tune which, sweetened and mellowed by the distance and the echoing chording of the hills, came up to them with the softness of a gentle, kindly dream of forgotten people.

The breaking contour of the river soon hid the lights of the boat, and Jimmie and Augusta were left to the great, solemn thinking silences about them, and to themselves, very content.

In the stark blackness of the closed wagon, in the middle of the night, Augusta found herself standing on the floor. She did not know how, or why, she had gotten out of the little string hammock that was her bed. But now she was shocked into full wakefulness. The wagon seemed to be moving and she gave a little scream of terror as she thought of the cliff and the terrible broken fall to the tracks below.

But the roar of the wind and swish of driven rain drowned her scream and she realized that what she thought was movement was just the swaying of the wagon body on its springs.

Reassured, and recovering quickly from her first fright, she stood swaying in the middle of the floor, her hand clutching the wooden side of Jimmie's bunk. He was sleeping quietly, very quietly it seemed, and Augusta had to lean her ear down almost to his lips to catch the stir of his breathing.

The chill of the water laden air caught her lightly clad body and she shivered as her hands went groping over Jimmie's bedding to see that he was all covered and dry. The tugging of the wind at the canvas threatened her now, not with the fear that it might overturn the wagon or drive it over the cliff but that it might rip a hole somewhere and drench Jimmie.

Again she thought with trembling of the safe refuge of solid walls, of the friendly comfort of feeling that people were near at hand to help if there were need, and a wave of homesick loneliness, a sickening fear of destitution and homelessness, swept over her.

The storm driving high across the chasm of the river struck full and mercilessly at the wagon exposed on the tip of the cliff. Sheets of rain came whipping down the wind, tearing at the canvas and threatening every instant to strip it from the frames. The wind went snapping and howling by like some hungry, angry animal, defeated and driven off for the moment, but sure to come and threaten again. Peals of thunder rolled and reverberated against the rocks, coming every moment nearer and more terrifying as the centre of the storm swept down the river. Augusta straightened up and stood there, it seemed for hours, her eyes staring wide and fascinated, waiting for and cringing under each successive stroke of lighting as it came ripping down through the storm, lighting the black interior of the wagon with a ghastly glow. At last, when it seemed that if she faced another flash of the horrid light she must surely go mad, she sank down to her knees upon the cold floor and buried her eyes deep in the pillow beside Jimmie's head. She wanted to wake him, to creep into his arms and be held, for she was horribly frightened. But he was warm and safe as he was and she felt that she must not disturb him.

After a little she remembered that she must not do things like this. She must be sensible and get back into the warmth of her blankets. She was shivering and chattering with cold and fright. And she knew that she must take no risks of making herself ill. She rose obediently to the telling of her own good sense and went groping for her hammock. But she felt that she must look outside. If she could only once see the solid world outside and know with her eyes that it was standing still and unmoved while her own crazy shelter rocked and swayed she could feel safer.

She poked a little hole between the curtains at the back of the wagon, for the wind was driving dead at the front, and peeped out. A flash of lightning showed her Donahue, the mis-named, the sturdy, the patient, standing unmoved and uncomplaining in the lee of the wagon. Her heart gave a bound of pity and compunction. She had forgotten him entirely. She had not even thought of his being out there in the storm. He might have walked away, she thought, and found some shed or shelter for himself. Instead, he stood there, dumb and faithful. Impulsively she put her hand out into the rain towards him, and she was thrilled with a sudden feeling of comfort and help as she felt a cold wet nose come up and nuzzle in her palm.

She did not know that the love which came to her in that moment for the big, ungainly, faithful horse would one day spring the trap of life for her and Jimmie. But even if she had known, I think she would still have preferred to love him.

She crept contentedly back into bed. And although the wind howled and the rain lashed mercilessly and she watched nervously all through the night, yet she had none of the panic fear of her early fright. That figure of patient, dumb strength and dependableness standing out there in the storm had given her a courage that would not be easily shaken again.

Towards morning the wind went down, but the rain continued to fall in a steady drizzling mist that ushered in a gray, cold, depressing morning. To Augusta it seemed interminable hours before it was time to get up and feed Donahue. She thought seriously of making hot coffee for him, but gave up the idea, not because she was afraid of Jimmie's ridicule but because she was not sure that Donahue would understand.

Jimmie slept heavily and awoke feverish and coughing horribly. Augusta could think of nothing to do but to get away from this place. It would have seemed more reasonable to stay quiet at least until the rain stopped, for here standing still she could keep the wagon tight and dry inside. But she could not help feeling that they would be better anywhere than here. Besides, the commissariat was in trouble. When she opened the little chest in the side of the wagon she found that the four bottles of milk which she had bought the evening before for Jimmie's ration of today had all been curdled by the storm. That settled the matter. Jimmie could not have his breakfast until she had found a farmhouse or a country store where she could buy milk. They must move on in the rain.

She bundled out cheerily in rain coat and rubbers to assay the doubtful business of hitching the horse alone, for she would not think of letting Jimmie out in the rain.

"I suppose, Donahue," she apologized, "it isn't proper for a gypsy to wear rubbers. Probably I ought to go barefoot, but you won't please expect that, for a little while anyway. Now I hate to hurry your breakfast," she explained as she brought the bridle, "but you know Jimmie hasn't had any yet, and doesn't know where he's going to get any. And I strongly suspect that you're only pretending anyhow. I'm almost sure," she said peering sharply down into the bucket where Donahue was making a hurried business of snuffing up imaginary oats, "that you finished the last of your oats five minutes ago. Hold up your head, sir."

Donahue did not understand the spoken word. Mary Donahue had a way of slapping him sharply under the jaw at this juncture. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the bridle and raised his head cheerfully.

The harness was mean and sticky with the rain and the mildew of the night's dampness, and Jimmie had been none to expert in hanging it away so that it would come out right and convenient. But with much tugging and careful study and brave whistling in the rain, and more tugging, Donahue was finally backed into the shafts and the traces made fast. When all was ready and Augusta was about to climb into the wagon she noticed what seemed to be some entirely superfluous straps hanging down towards Donahue's hind feet.

They were, of course, the "hold-back" straps, to keep the wagon from bumping the horse's legs going down hill. Augusta could see no earthly use for them, but she knew they were out of place dangling down there. They gave Donahue a half dressed effect which she did not like. She wondered if she ought to consult Jimmie, but after more study she remembered triumphantly that they went around the shafts. She wound them around the shafts and buckled them up neatly. Knowing nothing of their importance or their purpose, she could not know that the proper fastening home of a hold-back strap to the shaft is a thing that must be learned, and learned young. Everything now looked right and neat, so she climbed up and fixed the driving curtain as Mary Donahue had shown her how to do.

"Do you think you'd better start," Jimmie objected through the inner curtain at the last minute. "I'd rather go hungry all day than to see you out there in the rain. I'm not hungry anyway."

"Why, who cares for a little rain. Giddap, Donahue," she sang out tightening up the reins.

Donahue picked his way soberly out through the trees and in spite of Augusta's tugging on the left hand rein to turn him up the road deliberately crossed to the spring.

"I didn't think you'd ever want water again," Augusta explained her oversight, "after last night."

Donahue took his accustomed morning draught, and, blowing the water from his nostrils, turned sedately and started up the road.

Jimmie sat upon his bunk, fully dressed, shivering miserably and trying to choke down the sound of his coughing. The wagon swayed along creaking and complaining as they climbed the grade. He rose to look out through the rear curtain at the gray, sodden day. He wished that Augusta could not hear his cough. He knew that it hurt her really more than it did him. And he wished, he wished, well—several things. As he stood there, thinking vaguely, dejectedly, he felt the wagon slip forward gently, and then there was a slight bump.

The wagon was yanked forward so roughly that he nearly fell out through the curtain. He caught himself and swaying back was pitched into his bunk. He scrambled up again and clutching desperately at the side of his bunk managed to get forward to the back of the driving seat. Tearing apart the curtain he tumbled into the seat and understood what was happening.

The hold-back straps had slipped loose, the wagon was bumping cruelly on Donahue's legs at every jump, and he was running away madly down a long hill.

The driving curtain had broken down in front of Augusta. She was down on her knees in the wet, her hair flying wildly about her, tugging despairingly at the reins over the dashboard, and praying:

"Oh, please, please, Donahue! What is it? What is it? Please, whoa. I don't care, but you'll hurt Jimmie Oh, please stop and don't hurt Jimmie!"

Then she turned to another quarter:

"Dear, dear God, and Mary Mother, please don't let Jimmie get hurt. It's my fault! You know I took him out this way. You know he didn't want to come," she appealed. "And I'll be so good. Oh, please don't let Jimmie be hurt!"

Wardwell slipped cautiously down and gathering her up braced her in the seat.

"Hold tight, dear," he commanded. "We'll be all right." And he braced himself to saw on the reins.

But Donahue by this time had the bit in his teeth, and so far as any effect of the reins was concerned Jimmie might as well have been pulling at the dashboard. The horse had no check rein. His head was down, his back flattened out, and he was running like a frightened dog, the wagon jolting down wickedly on his legs at every few jumps.

Jimmie knew that he was as frightened and as powerless as the girl crouching beside him. If he jumped with her, they would be hurt or killed. If they stayed and hung on the horse would surely stumble or the wagon would slew off the road—he looked down the winding stretch of the road and counted the curves and wondered at which one of them they would be thrown over the bank—or they would meet some heavy truck and be crushed.

The crazed fright of the horse came back to the hearts of the two behind him. The mad Rap-a-rap, Rap-a-rap of his frantic feet on the hard road, the wild careening of the wagon, the loud pumping of blood in their throats took from them all sense and thought as the rain beat unfelt upon their faces and trees and rocks and fences whirled drunkenly by.

Augusta was hugging closely now while Jimmie sawed mechanically at the reins, and he heard her praying quietly. His heart stopped beating as he looked down a sudden dip of the road below them and saw a country railroad crossing. Beyond the tracks the road ran up a hill again. If he could only cross safely, he could stop the horse there where the incline of the hill would hold the wagon back from hitting him.

But because this was all an ordered nightmare, Wardwell heard, just where in a nightmare he would expect to hear it, the whistle of a train. He tried to drag the powerful crazed horse to the side of the road, to overturn the wagon if he must. But he might as well have tried to turn the oncoming engine.

Augusta saw the train coming toward the crossing, as they were coming. She did not cry out, only snuggled a little closer and waited. Then with one last mad dip the horse struck the tracks, and the wagon leaped across in front of the grinding engine.

A gray faced man leaning out of the cab of the engine yelled crazily at them, but they did not hear. Donahue ran on up the hill, until he seemed to miss something. The wagon was not hitting him any more. Then he became conscious of the tugging at his jaw. He slowed down to a weak-kneed stumbling trot, then to a walk, and stopped, shaking and panting.

Wardwell sat a while holding Augusta tight, for now she was crying bitterly in great gasping sobs.

When he had petted and quieted her back to something like herself, he started to get down to fix the hold-backs. He was shaking weakly himself and as he reached his foot down to the step his hand caught something for support. It was the handle of the brake.

He stumbled to his feet on the ground, and turning back, his hand still on the handle of the brake, he broke out into a hysterical laugh.

"Oh Jimmie, don't!" said Augusta, frightened anew.

"Augusta," he said solemnly, "don't ever marry a fool again."

"What—what—?" "This," he explained, "is a brake, to stop the wagon. If I hadn't been a fool and lost my head I'd have thought of that brake and stopped us right at the start.

"But, anyhow, I think this is enough. We had better go back to the city, where people are paid to take care of us."

Augusta sat a little while thinking, while Jimmie fixed the hold-backs.

"Jimmie," she said simply, "do you think we'll ever go through anything worse than that?"

"No, my dear, we will not."

"Then we've passed the worst, already," she announced calmly. "Let us go and find your breakfast."

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