what would--just a few hours with her under the winter stars, when life
seemed to offer so little in the count of the years.

"Why, yes, of course! Did you think I'd dare go out in the dark alone,
without you?" and her joyous ingenuous casting of herself upon his
protection was positively poignant. "Hurry, please, because I--don't want
anybody to find me before you come!" After which request it took him very
little time to run across the lot and vault the fence into the road where
the electric stood.

"It's so uncertain how things arrange themselves sometimes, some places,"
she remarked to herself as she caught sight of the movements of the
foiled Hobson, whose search had now become an open maneuver.

Suddenly she laid her cheek against the arm of the sweater and sniffed it
with her delicate nose--yes, there was the undeniable fragrance of the
major's Seven Oaks heart-leaf. "He steals the tobacco, too," she again
remarked to herself as she caught sight of him skirting the fires as
he returned.

Just at this moment a pandemonium of yelps, barks, bays and yells broke
forth up the ravine and declared the hunt on.

"Everybody follow the dogs and keep within hearing distance! We'll wait
for the trailers to come up when we tree before we shake down!" shouted
David as with one accord the whole company plunged into the woods.

Away from the fire, the starlight, which was beginning to be reinforced
by the glow from a late old moon, was bright enough to keep the rush up
the ravine, over log and boulder, through tangle and across open, a not