frightened," she added, raising her voice slightly.

"But you ARE" he cried. "You're scared half out of your wits. You
can't fool me. I'd be scared myself at the thought of venturing into
those woods up yonder."

"Well, then, I AM frightened," she confessed plaintively. "Almost out
of my boots."

"That settles it," he said flatly. "You shall not undertake it."

"Oh, but I must. I am expected. It is import--"

"If you are expected, why didn't some one meet you at the station?
Seems to me--"

"Hark! Do you hear--doesn't that sound like an automobile--Ah!" The
hoarse honk of an automobile horn rose above the howling wind, and an
instant later two faint lights came rushing toward them around a bend
in the mountain road. "Better late than never," she cried, her voice
vibrant once more.

He grasped her arm and jerked her out of the path of the on-coming
machine, whose driver was sending it along at a mad rate, regardless
of ruts and stones and curves. The car careened as it swung into the
pike, skidded alarmingly, and then the brakes were jammed down.
Attended by a vast grinding of gears and wheels, the rattling old car
came to a stop fifty feet or more beyond them.

"I'd sooner walk than take my chances in an antediluvian rattle-trap