wide enough to allow the carriage and its escort to ride abreast.

It was in such contrast to the tortuous paths they had just
followed, that the horses gained a fresh impetus and galloped
forward as freely as though the race had but just begun.

Madame Alvarez stopped the carriage at one place and asked the
men to lower the hood at the back that she might feel the fresh
air and see about her, and when this had been done, the women
seated themselves with their backs to the horses where they could
look out at the moonlit road as it unrolled behind them.

Hope felt selfishly and wickedly happy. The excitement had kept
her spirits at the highest point, and the knowledge that Clay was
guarding and protecting her was in itself a pleasure. She leaned
back on the cushions and put her arm around the older woman's
waist, and listened to the light beat of his pony's hoofs
outside, now running ahead, now scrambling and slipping up some
steep place, and again coming to a halt as Langham or MacWilliams
called, ``Look to the right, behind those trees,'' or
``Ahead there! Don't you see what I mean, something crouching?''

She did not know when the false alarms would turn into a genuine
attack, but she was confident that when the time came he would
take care of her, and she welcomed the danger because it brought
that solace with it.

Madame Alvarez sat at her side, rigid, silent, and beyond the
help of comfort. She tortured herself with thoughts of the
ambitions she had held, and which had been so cruelly mocked that