He was a little below her, so that she saw him quite distinctly, and caught a glimpse of his horse pawing, with arched neck, in the bridle-path behind him.  She had no wish to meet him there and turned to steal back to her horse when a movement in the maples below caught her eye.  She paused, fascinated and alarmed by the cautious stir of the undergrowth.  The air was perfectly quiet; the disturbance was not caused by the wind.  Then the head and shoulders of a man were disclosed as he crouched on hands and knees, watching Armitage.  His small head and big body as he crept forward suggested to Shirley some fantastic monster of legend, and her heart beat fast with terror as a knife flashed in his hand.  He moved more rapidly toward the silent figure by the tree, and still Shirley watched wide-eyed, her figure tense and trembling, the hand that held the crop half raised to her lips, while the dark form rose and poised for a spring.

Then she cried out, her voice ringing clear and high across the little vale and sounding back from the cliff.

“Oh!  Oh!” and Armitage leaped forward and turned.  His crop fell first upon the raised hand, knocking the knife far into the trees, then upon the face and shoulders of the Servian.  The fellow turned and fled through the maple tangle, Armitage after him, and Shirley ran back toward the bridge where she had left her groom and met him half-way hurrying toward her.

“What is it, Miss?  Did you call?”

“No; it was nothing, Thomas—­nothing at all,” and she mounted and turned toward home.

Her heart was still pounding with excitement and she walked her horse to gain composure.  Twice, in circumstances most unusual and disquieting, she had witnessed an attack on John Armitage by an unknown enemy.  She recalled now a certain pathos of his figure as she first saw him leaning against the tree watching the turbulent little stream, and she was impatient to find how her sympathy went out to him.  It made no difference who John Armitage was; his enemy was a coward, and the horror of such a menace to a man’s life appalled her.  She passed a mounted policeman, who recognized her and raised his hand in salute, but the idea of reporting the strange affair in the strip of woodland occurred to her only to be dismissed.  She felt that here was an ugly business that was not within the grasp of a park patrolman, and, moreover, John Armitage was entitled to pursue his own course in matters that touched his life so closely.  The thought of him reassured her; he was no simple boy to suffer such attacks to pass unchallenged; and so, dismissing him, she raised her head and saw him gallop forth from a by-path and rein his horse beside her.

“Miss Claiborne!”

The suppressed feeling in his tone made the moment tense and she saw that his lips trembled.  It was a situation that must have its quick relief, so she said instantly, in a mockery of his own tone: