When Potter had got to the bottom and was riding away, I unfolded the note and read: 

    Don’t be a fool.  For God’s sake, have some sense and keep away
    from King’s Highway.

I laughed, and Miss King looked up inquiringly.  Following an impulse I’ve never yet been able to classify, I showed her the note.

She read it calmly—­I might say indifferently.  “He is quite right,” she said coldly.  “I, too—­if I cared enough—­would advise you to keep away from King’s Highway.”

“But you don’t care enough to advise me, and so I shall go,” I said—­and I had the satisfaction of seeing her teeth come down sharply on her lower lip.  I waited a minute, watching her.

“You’re very foolish,” she said icily, and went at her sketching again.

I waited another minute; during that time she succeeded in making the pass look weird indeed, and a fearsome place to enter.  I got reckless.

“You’ve spoiled that sketch,” I said, stooping and taking it gently from her.  “Give it to me, and it shall be a flag of truce with which I shall win my way through unscathed.”

She started to her feet then, and her anger was worth facing for the glow it brought to eyes and cheeks, and the tremble that came to her lips.

“Mr. Carleton, you are perfectly detestable!” she cried.

“Miss King, you are perfectly adorable!” I returned, folding the sketch very carefully, so that it would slip easily into my pocket.  “With so authentic a map of the enemy’s stronghold, what need I fear?  I go—­but, on my honor, I shall shortly return.”

She stood with her fingers clasped tightly in front of her, and watched me lead Shylock down that butte—­on the side toward the pass, if you are still in doubt of my intentions.  When I say she watched me, I am making a guess; but I felt that she was, and it would be hard to disabuse my mind of that belief.  And when I started, her fingers had been clinging tightly together.  At the bottom I turned and waved my hat—­and I know she saw that, for she immediately whirled and took to studying the southern sky-line.  So I left her and galloped straight into the lion’s den—­to use an old simile.

I passed through the gate and up to the house, Shylock pacing easily along as though we both felt assured of a welcome.  Old King met me at his door as I was going by; I pulled up and gave him my very cheeriest good morning.  He looked at me from under shaggy, gray eyebrows.

“You’ve got your gall, young man, to come this way twice in twenty-four hours,” he said grimly.

“You can turn around and go back the way you came in.”

“You asked me to call,” I reminded him mildly.  “You were not at home yesterday, so I came again.”

He glanced uneasily over his shoulder, and drew the door shut between himself and whoever was within.  “You damn’ cur,” he growled, “yuh know yuh ain’t no friend uh the Kings.”