Philip's eyes glinted oddly.

"I'm a mere novice," he admitted lightly. "If my shoulder didn't throb
so infernally," he added thoughtfully, "I'd lose all faith in the
escapade--it's so weird and mysterious. A crackle--a lunge--a knife in
the dark--and behold! I am here, exceedingly grateful and hungry
despite the melodrama."

To which Diane, raising beautifully arched and wondering eyebrows, did
not reply. Philip, furtively marking the firm brown throat above the
scarlet sweater, and the vivid gypsy color beneath the laughing dusk of
Diane's eyes, devoutly thanked his lucky star that Fate had seen fit to
curb the air of delicate hostility with which she had left him on the
Westfall lake. Well, Emerson was right, decided Philip. There is an
inevitable law of compensation. Even a knife in the dark has
compensations.

"Johnny," said Diane presently, briskly disinterring some baked
potatoes and a baked fish from a cairn of hot stones covered with
grass, "is off examining last night's trail of melodrama. He's greatly
excited. Let me pour you some coffee. I sincerely hope you're not too
fastidious for tin cups?"

"A tin cup," said Philip with engaging candor, "has always been a
secret ambition of mine. I once acquired one at somebody's spring
hut--er--circumstances compelled me to relinquish it. It was really a
very nice cup too and very new and shiny. Since then, until now, my
life, alas! has been tin-cupless."

Diane carved the smoking fish in ominous silence.