Precipitously she lifted her small brown face to his, and in her eyes he saw the strangest little unfinished expression flame up suddenly and go out again, a little fleeting expression so sweet, so shy, so transcendently lovely, that if it had ever lived to reach her frowning brow, her sulky little mouth, her—!

Then startlingly into his stare, into his amazement, broke a great white glare through the opening of the cave.

“My God!” he winced, with his elbow across his eyes.

“Why, it isn’t lightning!” laughed little Eve Edgarton.  “It’s the moon!” Quick as a sprite she flashed to her feet and ran out into the moonlight.  “We can go home now!” she called back triumphantly over her shoulder.

“Oh, we can, can we?” snapped Barton.  His nerves were strangely raw.  He struggled to his knees, and tottered there watching the cheeky little moonbeams lap up the mystery of the cave, and scare the yellow lantern-flame into a mere sallow glow.

Poignantly from the forest he heard Eve Edgarton’s voice calling out into the night.  “Come—­Mother’s—­horse!  Come—­Mother’s—­horse H—­o—­o, hoo!  Come—­come—­come!” Softly above the crackle of twigs, the thud of a hoof, the creak of a saddle, he sensed the long, tremulous, answering whinny.  Then almost like a silver apparition the girl’s figure and the horse’s seemed to merge together before him in the moonlight.

“Well—­of—­all—­things!” stammered Barton.

“Oh, the horse is all right.  I thought he’d stay ’round,” called the girl.  “But he’s wild as a hawk—­and it’s going to be the dickens of a job, I’m afraid, to get you up.”

Half walking, half crawling, Barton emerged from the cave.  “To get me up?” he scoffed.  “Well, what do you think you’re going to do?” Limply as he asked he sank back against the support of a tree.

“Why, I think,” drawled Eve Edgarton, “I think—­very naturally—­that you’re going to ride—­and I’m going to walk—­back to the hotel.”

“Well, I am not!” snapped Barton.  “Well, you are not!” he protested vehemently.  “For Heaven’s sake, Miss Edgarton, why don’t you go scooting back on the gray and send a wagon or something for me?”

“Why, because it would make—­such a fuss,” droned little Eve Edgarton drearily.  “Doors would bang—­and lights would blaze—­and somebody’d scream—­and—­and—­you make so much fuss when you’re born,” she said, “and so much fuss when you die—­don’t you think it’s sort of nice to keep things as quietly to yourself as you can all the rest of your days?”

“Yes, of course,” acknowledged Barton.  “But—­”

“But nothing!” stamped little Eve Edgarton with sudden passion.  “Oh, Mr. Barton—­won’t you please hurry!  It’s almost dawn now!  And the nice hotel cook is very sick in a cot bed.  And I promised her faithfully this noon that I’d make four hundred muffins for breakfast!”

“Oh, confound it!” said Barton.