"Why, it isn't lightning!" laughed little Eve Edgarton. "It's the
moon!" Quick as a sprite she flashed to her feet and ran out into the
moonlight. "We can go home now!" she called back triumphantly over
her shoulder.

"Oh, we can, can we?" snapped Barton. His nerves were strangely raw.
He struggled to his knees, and tottered there watching the cheeky
little moonbeams lap up the mystery of the cave, and scare the yellow
lantern-flame into a mere sallow glow.

Poignantly from the forest he heard Eve Edgarton's voice calling out
into the night. "Come--Mother's--horse! Come--Mother's--horse H--o--o,
hoo! Come--come--come!" Softly above the crackle of twigs, the thud of
a hoof, the creak of a saddle, he sensed the long, tremulous,
answering whinny. Then almost like a silver apparition the girl's
figure and the horse's seemed to merge together before him in the
moonlight.

"Well--of--all--things!" stammered Barton.

"Oh, the horse is all right. I thought he'd stay 'round," called the
girl. "But he's wild as a hawk--and it's going to be the dickens of a
job, I'm afraid, to get you up."

Half walking, half crawling, Barton emerged from the cave. "To get me
up?" he scoffed. "Well, what do you think you're going to do?" Limply
as he asked he sank back against the support of a tree.

"Why, I think," drawled Eve Edgarton, "I think--very naturally--that