Van smiled.  “I might be tempted to rob a gentleman,” he said, “but to deprive your passengers of your company would be a charity.  Pray waste no more of your precious time if that is your only concern.”

Beth had regained a shadow of her former composure.  Her courage had never been absent.  She was less alarmed than before and decidedly curious as to what this encounter might signify.  She dared address the horseman.

“But—­but surely—­you seem——­ You must have some excellent reason for—­for acting so peculiarly.”

He could not repress the brightness in his eyes as he met her half-appealing gaze.

“Reason, advice, and information would apparently be alike unwelcome to your chauffeur,” he answered, doffing his hat.  “He is eager to hasten on his way, therefore by all means let us bid him begone.”

Bostwick grew rapidly wilder at each intimation of his social standing—­a friend of the maid, and Beth’s chauffeur!  His impatience to proceed with all possible haste to Goldite was consuming.  He had not intended that anything under the sun should delay him another single hour—­not even Beth, should occasion arise to detain her.  Even now he was far more concerned about himself and the business of his mission than he was for the women in his charge.  He was much afraid, however, of the horseman’s visible gun.  He was not at all a person of courage, and the man before him presented such an unknown quantity that he found himself more or less helpless.  At most he could merely attempt a bluff.

“You’ll pay for this!” he cried somewhat shrilly, his face a black mask of anger.  “I’ll give you just half a minute to release these ladies and permit them to go with me in peace!  If you refuse——­”

The horseman interrupted.

“I said before you had not been ordered on your way, but now I’ve changed my mind.  Don’t talk any more—­get into your car and hike!”

The gleam in his eye achieved two results:  It cowed the last vestige of bravado in Bostwick’s composition and ignited all the hatred of his nature.  He hesitated for a moment, his lips parting sidewise as if for a speech of defiance which his moral courage refused to indorse.  Then, not daring to refuse the horseman’s command, he climbed aboard the car, the motor of which had never ceased its purring.

“You’ll pay for this!” he repeated.

The girl, now pale again and tremendously disturbed, was regarding Bostwick with a new, cold light in her eyes—­a light that verged upon contempt.  She had never seen this lack of courageous spirit in the man before.

“But, Searle!  You’re not going—­you’re not really going, like this?”

It was the horseman who replied.

“You see, his time is precious.  Also in his present state of mind he is certainly unfit company for—­well, for Dave, here, a man who loves the pure white dove of peace.”  The station owner grinned.  Van turned once more to the car owner, adding, placidly:  “There, there, driver——­”