Jim Otis drove a stout little mare with a good wind for speed, but she had not the stride of David Hautville’s great roan.  Moreover, after the first stretch, she slacked on the hills and fell into walks in the lonely reaches, almost as if she had learned it in a lesson.  Many a pretty girl, flushing sweetly under Jim Otis’s gay smile, and perhaps under his caressing arm, had ridden behind that little canny mare, who learned well the meaning of the careless rein along the woodland roads.

However, to-day there was no careless rein.  At the first slack Madelon herself had reached the whip and touched the gently ambling neck.  “She has more speed in her than this,” said she, shortly.

“She hasn’t been driven for two days, either,” asserted Jim Otis.  “Wake up, Molly!” He took the whip himself and flourished it with a quick little snap over her back.  In truth, Jim Otis was as anxious to be at this journey’s end as Madelon, for he feared every minute lest she should ask him again if he had seen her take the knife, and that he would again have to oppose falsehood to her frantic pleading.  But Madelon had believed him.  She did not beg him again for his evidence.  She sat still at his side with a strained look in her black eyes, and they rode in silence, with the storm heaping its white flakes on their shoulders, until they reached Ware Centre.

Then Madelon turned quickly to Jim Otis.  “Don’t drive to my home,” said she; “I would rather not go home yet.  Drive to Burr Gordon’s house, please.  I want to see his mother.  Don’t turn—­keep straight on.”

“Yes, I know where he lives,” said Jim, soberly.  He drove very slowly.  They were drawing near the turn in the road.  “See here,” he said, suddenly, “don’t you think you’d better go home now?” He spoke with nothing of the half-gay, half-caressing authority with which he was wont to turn a pretty girl to his mind, but timidly rather, and kept his eyes fixed on the mare’s nodding head, hooded with snow.

“No, I must see Burr’s mother,” replied Madelon.

“But your folks will be expecting you, won’t they?” persisted Jim Otis.  He felt that he had a duty of loyalty towards this desperate girl’s father and brothers as well as to herself.  He had promised Eugene Hautville to bring her home this morning, and who could tell where she might wander and when she might return if he left her now?

He still did not look at Madelon as he spoke, but he felt her turn and fasten her eyes upon his face, and somehow they compelled his.  He raised them and saw her beautiful face full of a scorn of passion which he might die and never know in himself.

“What do you think that is to me,” said she, “when I’ve got to save his life?  If you do not wish to carry me farther, go back.  I will walk.”

“I will take you wherever you wish,” returned Jim Otis, and touched up the mare, and neither spoke again until they reached Burr Gordon’s house, high on its three terraces, with Lot Gordon’s opposite.  Then Jim halted his mare in the road before it, and would have alighted to assist Madelon, but she sprang out before him.  “I am much obliged to you and your mother for what you have done for me,” said she, and turned with a swing of her red cloak, and was skimming up the terraces like a red-winged bird.