“If I had only kept my mouth shut about his old fences,” he said to himself.  “Confound my bull!” and he looked anxiously at Daphne, who sat with her eyes riveted on her father.  The next moment she had turned, and they were laughing in each other’s faces.

“What shall I do?” she cried, leaning over and burying her face in her hands, and lifting it again, scarlet with excitement.

“Don’t do anything,” he said calmly.

“But Hilary, if he sees us, we are lost.”

“If he sees us, we are found.”

“But he mustn’t see me here!” she cried, with something like real terror.  “I believe I’ll lie down in the grass.  Maybe he’ll think I am a friend of yours.”

“My friends all sit up in the grass,” said Hilary.

But Daphne had already hidden.

Many a time, when a little girl, she had amused herself by screaming like a hawk at the young guineas, and seeing them cuddle invisible under small tufts and weeds.  Out in the stable lot, where the grass was grazed so close that the geese could barely nip it, she would sometimes get one of the negro men to scare the little pigs, for the delight of seeing them squat as though hidden, when they were no more hidden than if they had spread themselves out upon so many dinner dishes.  All of us reveal traces of this primitive instinct upon occasion.  Daphne was doing her best to hide now.

When Hilary realized it he moved in front of her, screening her as well as possible.

“Hadn’t you better lie down, too?” she asked.

“No,” he replied quickly.

“But if he sees you, he might take a notion to ride over this way!”

“Then he’ll have to ride.”

“But, Hilary, suppose he were to find me lying down here behind you, hiding?”

“Then he’ll have to find you.”

“You get me into trouble, and then you won’t help me out!” exclaimed Daphne with considerable heat.

“It might not make matters any better for me to hide,” he answered quietly.  “But if he comes over here and tries to get us into trouble, I’ll see then what I can do.”

Daphne lay silent for a moment, thinking.  Then she nestled more closely down, and said with gay, unconscious archness:  “I’m not hiding because I’m afraid of him.  I’m doing it just because I want to.”

She did not know that the fresh happiness flushing her at that moment came from the fact of having Hilary between herself and her father as a protector; that she was drinking in the delight a woman feels in getting playfully behind the man she loves in the face of danger:  but her action bound her to him and brought her more under his influence.

His words showed that he also felt his position,—­the position of the male who stalks forth from the herd and stands the silent challenger.  He was young, and vain of his manhood in the usual innocent way that led him to carry the chip on his shoulder for the world to knock off; and he placed himself before Daphne with the understanding that if they were discovered, there would be trouble.  Her father was a violent man, and the circumstances were not such that any Kentucky father would overlook them.  But with his inward seriousness, his face wore its usual look of reckless unconcern.