She, it seemed, was still on a rising wave of rebellion, moral and social, like so many women; while his wave had passed, and he was drifting in the trough of it.  He supposed she had dropped religion, like everything else.  Well, the type didn’t attract him.  He believed the world was coming back to the old things.  The war had done it—­made people think.  No doubt this girl had rushed through a lot of things already, and thought she knew everything.  But she didn’t.

Then, as their talk went on, this first opinion dropped in confusion.  For instead of presenting him with a consistent revolutionist, his companion was, it appeared, full of the most unexpected veins and pockets of something much softer and more appealing.  She had astonishing returns upon herself; and after some sentiment that had seemed to him silly or even outrageous, a hurried “Oh, I dare say that’s all nonsense!” would suddenly bewilder or appease a marked trenchancy of judgment in himself which was not accustomed to be so tripped up.

The upshot of it was that both Rachel and her new acquaintance enjoyed an agreeable, an adventurous half hour.  They got rapidly beyond conventionalities.  One moment she thought him rude, the next delightful; just as she alternately appeared to him feminist and feminine.  Above them the doomed beech trees, still green in the late August afternoon, spread their canopy of leaf, and through their close stems ran dark aisles of shadow.  Below them was the tree-strewn hill-side.  In the hollow Rachel could see Janet Leighton and Mrs. Fergusson among the measuring girls; the horses moving to and fro; the Canadian lumber-men catching at and guiding the logs; the trolleys descending the valley; while just opposite to them trunk after trunk was crashing down the hill, the line of the steel cable gleaming now and then in a fitful sunshine which had begun to slip out below a roof of purple cloud.  Only one prisoner was left to look after the slide.  The others had just gone down the hill, at a summons from below.  Suddenly Ellesborough sprang to his feet.

“Good Heavens! what’s that?” For a loud cry had rung out, accompanied by what sounded like a report.  The man who had been standing among the dead brushwood on the other side of the descending timber, about a hundred yards away, had disappeared; and the huge beech just launched from above had ceased to move.

Another cry for help.

“The cable’s broken!” said Ellesborough, starting at full speed for the slide.  Rachel rushed after him, and presently caught him up where he knelt beside a man lying on the ground, and writhing in great pain.  The prisoner’s cap had fallen off, and revealed a young German lad of nineteen or twenty, hardly conscious, and groaning pitifully at intervals.  As he lay crouched on his face, the red patches on his back, intended to guide the aim of an armed guard in case of any attempt to escape, showed with a sinister plainness.