Vic Burleigh sat looking straight at her and the light in his own eyes
told nothing of the glitter that had flashed in them when he glared
at Professor Burgess down in the Corral.

"I wasn't killing snakes. I was looking up at a girl on the rotunda
stairs the first time," he said, "and I don't want to tell about
this scar, because I've wished a thousand times to forget it.
See how much darker it is down there than it is up here."

The shadows were lengthening in the Corral where the supper
fires were gleaming. Across the low bluff the imprisoned sun
was sending a dull red glow along the waters of the Walnut.

"Look at that still place in the river, Victor. The ripples are all on
the farther side," Elinor said, looking pensively downstream.

"Watch it a minute. Do you see that bit of drift coming upstream
in the still water?" Vic asked.

"Why, the water does move; toward us, too, instead of down the river.
I'd like to boat around in that quiet place."

She was leaning forward, resting her chin in her hand.
In outline against the misty background shot through with
the crimson light from the storm-smothered sun, with the gray
shadows of the old Kickapoo Corral below them, hemmed in by
the silver gleaming waters of the Walnut, a picture grew up
before Victor Burleigh's eyes that he was never to forget.
Like the cleft of the lightning through the cloud, like the flash
of the swallow's wing, the careless-hearted boy leaped to the stature