CLEAR of The Castle, Grafton looked at his watch; it was half-past three. “That’s why the servant poked his head in at the door so often,” he thought. “We were at it more than three hours.” He strode along in a jubilant frame of mind. He felt that the Spaniard was practically his; it was a question of detail. And Casimir was a worthy antagonist; the struggle would be full of interest for both.

He was still a quarter of a mile from the park gates when he heard a scream. He listened; nearly half a minute of silence, and then a lusty-lunged feminine call for help. He dashed into the wilderness, breaking a path with difficulty through the heavy undergrowth. He had gone three or four hundred yards, guided by the repeated calls, when he heard in the same voice, in German: “Come no nearer until I explain.” He pressed on; there was a ferocious, growling grunt and a big wild boar, with open jaws and long yellow tusks, came at him. He made for a tree and scrambled up into its branches. He heard a suppressed laugh; his panic-stricken climb could not have been other than ludicrous to an on-looker; he glanced all round but could see no one through the curtain of leaves.

“Where the devil is she?” he said, in English, his voice louder than he thought.“Here,” came the reply, also in English; “the third tree to your right—the lowest limb.”

He now saw a pair of laced boots with high tops and the edge of a brown cloth walking-skirt. “Those feet look promising,” he thought, as he watched them swinging cheerfully. He crawled farther out on the big limb. When he paused again he could see her waist; a brown silk sash with tasselled ends was wrapped several times round it. He could also see one of her hands; she had her glove off and the hand was as promising as the feet. He crawled a little farther. Pausing again, he peered out; he was looking into the charming, amused face of Her Serene Highness! She recognized him instantly. She tried to sober her features, but the spectacle of this dignified young man on all fours craning his neck at her through the leaves was too much for her gravity. She began to laugh, and, as he instinctively released one hand, took off his hat and bowed, she became almost hysterical.

He swung himself round and found a secure sitting from which he could view her. She said: “I beg your pardon; I’m so—”

“Don’t mind me,” he said, good-humoredly. “It’s most becoming to you to laugh.”

She straightened her face and elaborately brought forward a look designed to “put him in his place.”

“I prefer the laughter,” he said. “Posing isn’t a bit becoming to you—not a bit. You seem to have the habit of drawing me into disagreeable situations and then putting on airs. Who invited me down that passage-way at Paquin’s? Who dropped her handkerchief twice in my path and suspected me of flirtation? Who summoned me to come and amuse her by being chased by a wild boar?”

“But I told you to stop,” she protested, feebly.

“Rather late, wasn’t it? I’m not complaining. It’s delightful to have the chances fate has given me. But I strongly object to your blaming me for fate’s fault.”

“You are rude,” she said, hotly. “You are taking an unfair advantage of my helpless position.”

“Pray calm yourself,” he answered. “All I ask of you is ordinary civility or silence. I certainly have no desire to thrust myself upon you.”

Both were silent and sat watching the boar as it ranged frantically from one tree to the other, pausing at each to look up with an insane gleam in its wicked, little, blood-shot eyes. After fifteen minutes Grafton moved slowly back towards the fork of the tree. As he reached it and seemed about to descend, she said, in a humble tone that made him smile inwardly, “Where are you going, please?”

“I’m going to make a dash for a rifle I see on the ground,” he answered.

“You mustn’t—you mustn’t. I forbid it!” she exclaimed.

“Have you any suggestion to offer as to how we are to escape?”

“No,” she replied, reluctantly, “except to call out.”

“And bring somebody else to make an amusing spectacle of himself—if he doesn’t happen to get killed. I can’t congratulate you on your scheme.” And he continued his descent.

“Stop; for God’s sake, stop!” she called out. “I am ashamed of myself. I am sufficiently punished.”

“My dear young lady, I’m not punishing you; I’m trying to get myself, and incidentally you, out of this mess.”

“Please—please—come back where I can see you; I wish to say something to you.” It was certainly Erica and not Her Serene Highness who was speaking now.

He obeyed her. When he could see her again he said, “Well?”

“I—I want you to say that you forgive me,” she said, earnestly. “I want to see that you forgive me.”

He looked at her in a friendly way. “I understand how it is with you. I don’t in the least blame you. Only, in my country, we never permit any one to take that tone towards us. And now, please, Your Majesty of the Oak Tree, may I go for the rifle?”

“May I say that you mustn’t?” she asked, a smile in her eyes.

“I’d like to have a reason.”

“Well, in the first place”—she hesitated—“it isn’t loaded.”

He looked at her searchingly. She blushed.

“Is it your rifle?” he asked.

“Yes; I always carry it when I walk in the woods; there’s a chance that something disagreeable might escape from the forest into the park, though the fences are strong and high. And to-day when the boar came at me”—she looked as though she felt very foolish—“my foot caught and—I dropped the rifle.”“And you don’t load it?”

She looked still more confused. “No, I’m not so silly as that. It is loaded,” she said. “You’re always making me apologize to you.”

“Or is it that I make you feel like apologizing to yourself?”

“Perhaps that is it,” she admitted. “But—please don’t go down for the rifle.” She looked at the boar—its thin, powerful body, its vicious green eyes, its greedy, raw mouth—how those tusks and those pointed hoofs could tear and rip and mangle! Then she looked at the handsome, calmly courageous young American. “Please,” she begged. “If anything should go wrong with you, think how it would make me suffer, for I got you into this danger.”

“I’ve a better plan,” he said. “I might climb through on the branches until I was directly over the gun. Then you could distract the brute’s attention by swinging your sash just over his nose. I could jump and grab the gun; I’d have plenty of time to aim and kill him.”

“That sounds very—unsafe,” she objected.

“At any rate, it will do no harm for me to get as near the gun as possible,” he said. And he began to crawl along a branch in the general direction of the rifle. The boar noted the movement and followed him underneath, snapping its fangs at him, the froth flowing from its ragged lips. Erica watched, her eyes wide, her face gray with dread. Crash! a branch gave way under him. He fell, and so low was he before he could stop himself that one of his feet, clad in a heavy shoe, kicked the boar in the nose. She, seeing him begin to fall, screamed and turned about to descend.

“Stop! Stop!” he exclaimed, as he drew himself up into the tree. “I’m all right!”

She clambered back just as the boar, dashing for her, flung itself high up the trunk. He looked at her, saw that her eyes were closed and that she was trembling. “Are you going to faint?” he exclaimed. “Quick, unwind your sash and fasten yourself in the tree with it.”

“No,” she said. “I sha’n’t faint. Oh, what a weak, cowardly creature I am!”

“You?” His look and his tone brought the color to her cheeks and a pleased look to her eyes. “You, who were coming down when you thought the boar had me? You are the bravest girl I ever saw. You can be counted on.”He remembered the boar and again set out along the branches. “I’ll be more careful,” he called, over his shoulder. Soon he was within six feet of the rifle and directly above it.

“Now what will you do?” she said. “I don’t see that we’re any better off.”

“Patience,” he replied. He broke off a branch and lowered it towards the ground; it reached. He slowly pushed the rifle towards the base of the tree. The boar backed away and eyed the moving branch suspiciously. Grafton had got the rifle against the trunk before the boar rushed. He flung the branch far out from the tree, and the boar leaped into it and trampled and tore it, paying no attention to the rifle.

“Will you please unwind your sash,” said Grafton, “and tease him with it?—keep the end just out of reach of his nose. While you do that I’ll jump down the other side of the tree and shoot him.”

She unwound the long brown sash and let down one of its tasselled ends. The boar rushed it several times, then came to a halt under it, prancing round and round, jumping into the air, frothing and snapping its tusks. Grafton watched until he could see that it was dizzy from rage and rapid whirling.

“Shout!” he called to her. “Shout at him and shake the scarf.”

She obeyed. He dropped to the ground, snatched the rifle, took quick aim, and fired. The boar was leaping into the air. When it fell, it fell to its side, dead—there was not even a quiver.

“Don’t come till I make sure,” he called, running towards the carcass. Down upon it fluttered the brown sash, and then came a heavier body—Erica herself.

Grafton put his arms about her and stood up, holding her as if she were a child. Her long lashes lifted and she looked into his eyes with a faint, apologetic smile. “Put me down, please,” she murmured.

“Not just yet,” he said. “Don’t make an effort, and you’ll come round more quickly.”

She closed her eyes and relaxed into his arms. “How strong he is!” she thought. “And how brave! How glad I am to see him again, to find that he’s just as I’ve been suspecting he’d be!” At this a little color came into her cheeks.

He, not dreaming what was going on in her romantic young mind, was looking down at her, trying to keep a very tender smile out of his face—she looked so like a sleeping, spoiled child, with her child’s complexion, her short upper lip, her round, aggressive little chin. Her skin was so fine that he could see the blood pulsing through the delicate tracery of the veins in her cheek.

“Now I’ll try,” she said, after a few seconds. He let her feet down, but still held her about the shoulders. He led her to a fallen tree, and they sat, she leaning against him, he holding her firmly in his arm. Soon she could sit alone, her elbows on her knees, her chin between her hands.

“You are an American; so you said at—at Paquin’s?”

“Yes; and so are you—almost. You look and speak and act like an American woman.”

“I had an American governess. And my father’s—second wife was an American.”

“But,” he went on, “I don’t feel like an American just now. I feel as if we both belonged here—in this wilderness—as if I had known you all the always I could remember.”

She sat up and smiled, dreamily, sympathetically, without looking at him. “I was just thinking,” she said, “I don’t even know your name, yet I feel as if I knew you as well as I have ever known any one.” She sighed. “I must go.”

She caught him looking longingly at her, and they both blushed and were embarrassed. “My name is Grafton—Frederick Grafton,” he said.

“And mine is Erica.”

“Yes, I know that much—Erica what?”

“That’s all, except several other Christian names.”

“But how are you distinguished from other Ericas?”“Well, they might call me Erica of Zweitenbourg.”

“Then your name is the same as your uncle’s?”

“But that isn’t his name, nor mine. He’s Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg, and we’re of the younger line—the ducal branch. Our family is Traubenheim. We came here about four hundred years ago.”

“Then your name is Erica Traubenheim.”

“No; Erica of Traubenheim.”

“Erica Traubenheimer?”

“Dear me, no! That’s a dreadful name.”

“I don’t understand,” said Grafton. “It’s as though I should call myself Frederick of Grafton.”

“That is it; only in your country you write your names differently. I was talking to the American minister about it; he explained that you have your noble families as we do, only they don’t reign, but hold aloof from politics, except to accept the high appointments of state.”

Grafton laughed. “Did he tell you that?”

“Oh! I knew at once that you were of a noble family.”

“A noble family of—dress-fitters?”

Erica blushed.

“My father was a pork-packer,” continued Grafton. “And his father was a pork-packer, and before that a farmer, and—I had an aunt who was crazy on genealogy; she found out that we were descended from a blacksmith. And my mother’s grandfather was a carpenter—when he could get carpentering to do. We’re all like that in America.”“It must be very—very queer.” She seemed disappointed, depressed.

“Every country seems queer to every other. This country seems queer to me. Do you really like it—that life at The Castle?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, it seemed to me that if I were caught in such a routine—having to live my life on a plan fixed hundreds of years ago—never allowed to be my natural human self—it seems to me I’d die of weariness, unless I were imbecile or became so.”

“You wouldn’t mind it if you’d been educated for it.” She thought for a few minutes, then said: “Unfortunately, I wasn’t. My father’s—second wife persuaded him to educate me in the modern way. That makes this life almost impossible for me; it seems narrow and unreal, and useless. And it’s so dull, so deadly dull!”

“Why don’t you get out of it—break away?”

“A woman is helpless. Besides, I’m not sure—”

She rose and put on her Tyrol hat and wrapped her brown sash about her waist.

“I’ll walk with you as far as the road,” he said. “I don’t think I could find it alone.”

As they went, both silent and she constrained, he noted that she watched him curiously, as it seemed to him, critically, whenever she thought he was not seeing. They came to the cross-road and he asked, “When am I to see you again?”

She flushed painfully. “I—I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

He put out his hand. She hesitated, then gave him hers. “Good-bye,” she said.

“No; that wasn’t what I meant,” he explained, clasping her hand. She made a faint effort to draw it away, then let it lie in his. “Impossible, you say? Then you don’t wish to let me see you again?”

She hung her head. “No; not that. I do wish it. But it’s impossible—I think.”

He dropped her hand. “Very well,” he said.

They walked slowly on. She felt him going—going out of her life. She could not endure it. She said: “But”—she colored and kept her eyes down—“I—I walk here nearly every afternoon at three o’clock.”

“Isn’t that fortunate!” he said. “So do I.”

Their faces showed how happy they were. They came out of the woods into the main road and lingered over the parting. They parted like friends at the beginning of a promising friendship—a promising man-and-woman friendship. He stood looking after her, and as he was turning away found her handkerchief where she had stood. He picked it up, kissed it with a gentle smile of self-mockery, and put it carefully in the breast-pocket of his coat. “And I thought I came here for the Grand Duke’s Spaniard!” he said.