Stumblingly he reached the big gray’s side.

“But it’s miles!” he protested in common decency.  “Miles!—­and miles!  Rough walking, too, darned rough!  And your poor little feet—­”

“I don’t walk particularly with my ‘poor little feet,’” gibed Eve Edgarton.  “Most especially, thank you, Mr. Barton, I walk with my big wanting-to-walk!”

“Oh,” said Barton.  “O—­h.”  The bones in his knees began suddenly to slump like so many knots of tissue-paper.  “Oh—­all right—­Eve!” he called out a bit hazily.

Then slowly and laboriously, with a very good imitation of meekness, he allowed himself to be pulled and pushed and jerked to the top of an old tree-stump, and from there at last, with many tricks and tugs and subterfuges, to the cramping side-saddle of the restive, rearing gray.  Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he watched the girl’s neck muscles cord and strain.  Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he heard the girl’s breath rip and tear like a dry sob out of her gasping lungs.  And then at last, blinded with sweat, dizzy with weakness, as breathless as herself, as wrenched, as triumphant, he found himself clinging fast to a worn suede pommel, jogging jerkily down the mountainside with Eve Edgarton’s doll-sized hand dragging hard on the big gray’s curb and her whole tiny weight shoved back aslant and astrain against the big gray’s too eager shoulder—­little droll, colorless, “meek” Eve Edgarton, after her night of stress and terror, with her precious scrap-book still hugged tight under one arm striding stanchly home through the rough-footed, woodsy night to “make four hundred muffins for breakfast!”

At the first crook in the trail she glanced back hastily over her shoulder into the rustling shadows.  “Good-by, Cave!” she called softly.  “Good-by, Cave!” And once when some tiny woods-animal scuttled out from under her feet she smiled up a bit appealingly at Barton.  Several times they stopped for water at some sudden noisy brook.  And once, or twice, or even three times perhaps, when some blinding daze of dizziness overwhelmed him, she climbed up with one foot into the roomy stirrup and steadied his swaying, unfeeling body against her own little harsh, reassuring, flannel-shirted breast.

Mile after mile through the jet-black lattice-work of the tree-tops the August moon spotted brightly down on them.  Mile after mile through rolling pastures the moon-plaited stubble crackled and sucked like a sheet of wet ice under their feet, then roads began—­mere molten bogs of mud and moonlight; and little frail roadside bushes drunk with rain lay wallowing helplessly in every hollow.

Out of this pristine, uninhabited wilderness the hotel buildings loomed at last with startling conventionality.  Even before their discreetly shuttered windows Barton winced back again with a sudden horrid new realization of his half-nakedness.

“For Heaven’s sake!” he cried, “let’s sneak in the back way somewhere!  Oh Lordy!—­what a sight I am to meet your father!”